‘There he is lads a fine big strong bull with not a bother on him.’
It rained till autumn. One unending caravan of clouds after another heading east, carrying mists and vaporous winds across darkened days. When suddenly the sun shone blazing. And Darcy Dancer’s father returned for three weeks of harvest. Selling the barley and the wheat as soon as they stood near ready and ripe to be cut and an auction was held for the two hundred cocks of hay. And before he left, ten more big bullocks, fifty sheep and five sows went off to market. And trays of silver egg cutters my mother had collected over the years along with selected pieces of Wedgwood and Meissen were packed by Crooks to accompany my father’s luggage.
Two upstairs maids Norah and Sheila and Kitty from the kitchens were given notice. And when Norah and Sheila were miraculously next morning reinstated, Kitty, in tears and howling out the act of contrition, was nearly dragged all the way to the front gate. And times she had minded me, her blue eyes wide like footballs and her red kink hair electrified around her head, as she said God would get even and had cast a curse on the house because my father a Catholic was raising me as a pagan Protestant. But wherever she was, she would, she promised, pray for the redemption of my immortal soul.
Sexton, in his Sunday best, his black bicycle cleaned and shined to go off to mass, went gently pumping his pedals with his long legs. And shouting as he rode by the front of the house and down the drive.
‘Incorrigible, incorrigible cur, that’s all he is or will ever be and you couldn’t whisper pax vobiscum within a mile of him without being branded a liar for life.’
Foxy had following the mending of his broken legs used one of his crutches to break his father’s arm, who, he claimed next morning, punched his mother all night over the house. Catherine the cook said what better hand to administer justice than a husband’s and it was about time someone had caught the wench who’d go behind a cock of hay with any stable lad, she with her skirts up and they with their trousers down. With Crooks mumbling as he gloomed through the pantry, nervously scratching at the tiny spots of dried soup and gravy that dotted his livery.
‘No good will ever come out of that bunch.’
Mr Arland on recent instructions from my father now came only Monday, Wednesday and Fridays, assigning me work to do alone on Tuesdays and Thursdays when he went instead to the great castle where the heaviest nobleman in the world lived and which could be seen on clear days from the high land of spy glass hill, its turrets and towers nestled distantly between the forested downs. Sexton exaggeratedly said it was where he worked for slave wages till my mother visiting remarked on his most splendid roses and chrysanthemums. And he wasted no time before he got himself fired by levelling a few sophisticated insults to the foreman which had to be made less and less so until that thick headed eegit understood. And soon after he was with cap in hand taking favoured instructions from the lady of Andromeda Park.
‘Ah young master Darcy there was no more beautiful woman than your mother. She was a saint, god rest her, a beauty. God speed her soul to heaven. She was a madonna. By god she was a madonna. With the purity of the blessed virgin, sine dubio and the kindest of the master creator’s creations, sine ira et studio, as surely as you follow my Latin.’
Days when Mr Arland was absent I found much pleasure climbing in the lofts and searching the attics. And on fine days, followed by my mother’s wolfhounds Kern and Olav, I would ride my white pony as far as I could get the stubborn animal to go across the fields. Trying once to make my way fording the streams and around the lakes to the great castle, but with its tower out of sight I would lose my direction and get lost. Returning muddy and scratched and leading my tired sweating pony into his box and fetching oats. I’d wait till Foxy would come in with the cows for their evening milking. Watching him reach in under their bags to hammer out jets of milk with his jerking fists, his woollen hat pulled down over the scars on his brow.
‘And where has master Darcy been today.’
‘I tried to find the way to the castle.’
‘Ah you’d have to know the way around the woods and lakes for that. Sure I’m taking that old Thunder and Lightning for a gallop again and I’ll show you the way.’
‘Don’t you think it’s time you stopped getting knocks on your head and your legs broken.’
‘Ah don’t worry I’ll be giving out the knocks soon enough. And the ones I’ve been getting will be like taps of a feather compared to the ones I’ll be handing out.’
‘Sexton says you’re a cur not fit to have conversation with the likes of me.’
‘That dirty filthy one eyed liar. What’s he doing but riding his cycle around pulling his prick into every hedge because not a woman in the countryside would let him near her.
‘What do you mean by that.’
‘Now don’t go around asking them questions and saying the answers that they came from me.’
‘But I do not know what you mean.’
‘Sure you’re old enough don’t you pull yours.’
‘I do not know what you are saying.’
‘The thing between your legs you piss out of. Haven’t you seen the bulls at the cows and the stallions at the mares.’
‘I am always shooed away.’
‘Well I’ll show you sometime, some night when the time’s ripe. It’s like so, the milk I’m squirting out the teat I’ve got in me hand. You can come with me over beyond where there’s the woman.’
‘What woman.’
‘The wife of the one eyed one armed man. She’d soon teach you.’
‘I’m not allowed out at night.’
‘I’ll get you out.’
‘Crooks locks the doors.’
‘Never mind that stupid eegit Crooks. I’ll have you out and not a soul will know. And here for a start I’ll show you mine. It’s only a middling size now but in two seconds it’ll be as long as an axe handle and spitting in a minute like a squirt of milk out of that cow.’
‘Nurse Ruby said that’s wrong till you’re old enough and married.’
‘Never mind that cross eyed hunchback who’d never find a husband in donkey’s years.’
‘Don’t say such a thing about my nurse.’
‘What harm, she’s gone now and you’re old enough. Sure what would that old crone know. Who’d put a hand to her when there was the likes of Norah and Sheila with nobs on them that would open a treasure chest.’
‘You shouldn’t speak of our servants in that manner if what you are saying is not nice.’
‘Sure nice or not there are goings on in the big house I could tell you plenty about. Four of the girls this last year are gone from there now with their bellies bulging to the nuns in Dublin.’
‘And what do you mean by that.’
‘That they’ll be having their bastard babies before long.’
Darcy Dancer went crossing the cobbled stable yard that night. Pony’s bridle draped over an arm. The word bastard blazing on the mind. A distant whistle of the train and a beast groaning out somewhere on the evening pastures. To know now for certain that men did something to ladies. And that Nurse Ruby went red in the face as I sat on a chair by the copper bath. She slapped my thigh when she looked down and saw what Foxy was showing me, sticking straight up at her from my lap. And to know now that a cross eyed hunched back was ugly to the rest of the world.
And a
Beauty