Edge of Glass Page 17

  He began, slowly, to heave his bulk from the car. ‘I will leave you now. But you will come again? ‒ I will not lose sight of you now?’

  All the way down the straight avenue I watched him in the rear-view mirror ‒ the kindly gnome, the man of business, the anguished father who could not permit the lie to carry on. I watched him until finally the trees seemed to close about his tiny, diminishing figure.

  III

  I ate dinner with Annie and Mrs. O’Shea in the kitchen. ‘Mr. Connor rang through to say he’ll not be back,’ Annie reported. I was glad he wasn’t there; I didn’t want to sit through a meal with him alone in the dining-room with last night’s encounter still looming large and unresolved. For dinner the three of us chose whatever pleased us from the prepared foods that Otto Praeger had sent ‒ ‘Like a party,’ Annie said. That started Mrs. O’Shea happily speculating on Friday’s funeral for her Great-Uncle Pat; I could think my own thoughts and nod to let her know I was listening. What I was thinking was that by Saturday, with the funeral out of the way, Lady Maude making improvement and my task performed, I would leave. It was then that the telephone rang.

  ‘I’ll answer it, Annie ‒ I’m finished supper, in any case.’

  ‘There’s a darlin’, Miss Maura.’

  I had to run to get to Connor’s office before it stopped ringing. ‘A call from London for Miss Maura D’Arcy.’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘Go ahead, please.’ Claude’s voice cut in almost before the operator was through. ‘Maura? Well, I’ve run you to earth at last. Listen, you bitch, you can’t do this to me.’

  ‘Do what?’ I answered him automatically, playing for a little time, wondering how he had found me, and knowing that somehow he would have got a lead to Sheridan Glass from Mary Hughes; a call to the Sheridan Glass works would have yielded the information about me he needed. Half of Claude’s success lay in his persistence.

  ‘Don’t give me that!’ he snapped back. I was aware of a sinking feeling; all that had seemed unsatisfactory, even wrong, with my London existence seemed to be contained in the very tone of that voice. ‘You know perfectly well what you’ve done. You’ve walked out on a commitment. You’ve failed to show up on a job. I’m furious with you, and Peter Latch would be furious with you if you were important enough for him to bother with. I won’t be treated this way, Maura …’

  The voice ran on, shrill, tending to go off into a high-pitched shriek of real or pretended rage. I pictured Claude’s face, white, round, the heavy tortoise-rimmed glasses giving it more authority than it truly possessed. Now he was indulging in a tantrum, but he would, in the future, use his grievances to browbeat me into doing things I didn’t want to do, into taking jobs I didn’t want. Claude could be very thrifty with his emotions, making them pay well. I was made more aware than I ever had been before of the kind of bondage my contract with a man like Claude placed me in. I had not questioned before that I could be screamed and shouted at, and was without the right to refuse to do what he told me; more than I knew, I had become Claude’s creature. Suddenly I was glad of the gesture of independence I had made in coming here, even though its repercussions would last for a long time.

  ‘I sent you a telegram, Claude.’ I tried to keep my voice even, not to reflect the hysteria which was part of doing business in Claude’s world. ‘After all, I only knew about the job late on Friday. By early Monday morning you knew I wasn’t able to accept the part in the film. It isn’t such an important part that Peter Latch won’t have a dozen other girls who could do as well.’ I found the courage to add, ‘Don’t browbeat me, Claude. I’m not in the mood for it.’

  The tone now grew silken. ‘Darling, I’m not browbeating you. I’m just pointing out that you could have missed a great opportunity. But I’m only ringing you to say that it still isn’t too late. The second girl on Peter Latch’s list is in New York, so his agents are still asking for you. You can be on a plane from Dublin in the morning ‒ you could be in Madrid tomorrow night. You do that, Maura, and I’ll overlook your behaviour this time.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Claude, I can’t do it. I have obligations here.’ How extraordinary to hear myself say it; I had obligations that had not existed three days ago.

  The scream of rage came back. ‘What obligations? ‒ your obligations are to me. What the hell are you doing in Ireland, in any case? There’s nothing in Ireland, for God’s sake!’

  ‘There is for me, Claude.’ My own calmness surprised me. ‘I’ll give you a ring when I get back. I’ll be ready for work then.’

  For the first time in our association I was the one who ended the conversation.

  I didn’t want to face the relentless curiosity of Mrs. O’Shea and Annie, so I started up the stairs. Meremount was gloomy in the twilight. The stairs creaked beneath my feet; I thought of the sunshine of Spain that I had turned away from, the sunshine of California that I had decided to refuse. I wondered if my brief, heady sense of independence was enough to compensate for what I had portioned out to myself here ‒ this large, dismal, crowded house, too quiet in the twilight and yet filled with the groans and creaks of age; an old woman, our contact established too late to do either of us any good; Connor and Brendan, who seemed to push and pull me between them as if I were Lotti all over again. And now, this afternoon, I had taken on to myself some of the haunted memories, the self-accusations of Otto Praeger. The price of independence, the choice of involvement, seemed to crane high.

  Restless, vaguely unhappy, I continued on past the first floor corridor, where the great main staircase ended, to the smaller, enclosed stairs leading to the next floor. I was glad of the creamy shape of Sapphire that suddenly emerged from somewhere among the furniture, going ahead of me up the stairs, seeming to share the sense of venturing; she gave a low, encouraging cry, and I could hear the gentle scrape of her claws on the bare boards. I had never been up here; it was dusty ‒ Annie’s cleaning would rarely get this far, not more than once or twice a year, I guessed. This was the floor of the dormer windows, the floor of the school-rooms and nurseries that had housed governesses and servants, in the days when there still had been governesses and servants. The long corridor was narrower than the one below, uncarpeted; my footsteps, though, did not echo in empty space. Here the furniture was crowded even more closely than on the lower floors. I prowled softly, conscious of the gathering dusk, and of the scampering of mice who sensed Sapphire’s approach. I opened unfamiliar doors, seeing more and more furniture. Closest to the stairs and overlooking the garden, was the room where Annie slept ‒ crowded, but showing her occupancy ‒ lace mats on a whole row of dressing tables and writing tables, pictures of children in First Communion veils, faded Sodality pictures, a crudely coloured print of Christ as the Good Shepherd above the bed, a crucifix with a piece of palm thrust behind it. A cot bed had been set up at the foot of Annie’s bed ‒ for Bridget, I imagined. With all the unoccupied rooms to use, Annie and Bridget slept together in this one; Bridget would not be accustomed yet to the noises of Meremount at night. I closed the door quickly. Next to it was a bathroom; a huge tub with claw feet and almost no enamel left, worn linoleum, threadbare towels, a water closet built into the dormer, and, conspicuously, a new gas fire. Lotti had been generous, then, and Annie’s comfort had been remembered. I moved on ‒ deserted, crammed rooms, one after the other ‒ pictures stacked against the walls, mirrors, chests, commodes; sometimes I paused to marvel over the inlay work of one of the pieces; I saw a set of chairs that I felt reasonably sure had to be Chippendale; mice were nesting in their seats. I found the room where the rolls of Tyrell tweed were piled; most of it had been abandoned to the moths. It was in this room, also, that the china had been stored ‒ whole dinner services, Spode, Wedgwood ‒ even under the dust the marvellous crimson and blue glowed. There was a service of a distinct rose colour I seemed to recognise. Gingerly I turned over one plate and saw the Sevres mark. I wondered for what banquets for forty Lady Maude had laid it aside; had she seen such
sights at Tyrell when she was a child and young woman? ‒ before the Edwardian twilight darkened forever into war abroad and rebellion here in Ireland? Had she expected such days to return? The prize of her garnering was the Chinese service; there would have been three hundred pieces of it laid out on the floor. In the last of the light I took a plate to the window to examine it more closely; it was a tobacco-brown pattern of great richness and depth; I was conscious of my ignorance ‒ Blanche would have known at once what it was ‒ but I did remember single plates of eighteenth-century Chinese porcelain that Blanche had had from time to time in the shop ‒ how she had cherished them, how expensive they had been. Very gently I returned it to its place on the stack, being careful where I put my feet; I suspected the service was immensely valuable. As I groped my way downstairs in the near-darkness, Sapphire leaping ahead of me, Otto Praeger’s words returned to tantalise. ‘What a sale it would make at Christie’s.’

  On the first-floor corridor there was visible one point of light. As if I had been a moth I was led towards it, and Sapphire was there before me. I heard the whispered voices before I reached the open door, Annie’s was slightly reverent, Mrs. O’Shea’s disparaging, but impressed in spite of herself. I knew I should not go in, ought not to seek out what was not my business, but I couldn’t help myself.

  ‘… like something in the pictures,’ Annie was saying.

  Mrs. O’Shea didn’t quite acquiesce. ‘Well, she didn’t stint herself, I’ll say that then, why should she ‒ with all that money?’

  Blue had been Lotti’s colour, I thought, as I stood in the doorway. It probably had been the colour of her eyes. The carpet that close-covered the huge room had the silver-blue sheen of pale water at sunrise; pale blue velvet covered the chairs and chaise-longue; deeper blue velvet hung as a frame to the windows, a waft of web-like silk, the colour of blue ice covered the glass and blocked the sight of the dark tangled garden. The great bed was canopied in blue velvet; large embellished initials on the silk coverlet proclaimed the ownership of all this pale splendour ‒ L.S. The blue and cream cat had leapt lightly on to the bed and settled herself against the bolster with an air of pleased familiarity.

  Some of Lady Maude’s most exquisite pieces had gone to furnish this room ‒ a beautiful little inlaid marquetry dressing-table with a silver-gilt framed mirror set on it, a secretaire with painted panels, a Louis XIV commode, a tall blue and white Chinese prunus vase. Where pictures might have hung there were mirrors, elaborately framed and gilded mirrors, but glass that should have been age-spotted and dark had been renewed so that the images were clear and sharp. I wondered that the two women didn’t glimpse me in one of the mirrors, but the passage was in darkness, and they were absorbed in their talk.

  ‘If you could have seen her here ‒ with her blue-silk gown, and those feathery slippers, and her hair like gold …’

  ‘Oh, I knew her right enough,’ Mrs. O’Shea retorted. ‘Many’s the time I saw her in Cloncath.’

  ‘But here,’ Annie insisted. ‘If you could have seen her here in her nightgowns and all the lacy things ‒ that’s why there’s all the heaters in here.’ She pointed to one of the five big electric storage units that stood about the room, spoiling its elegance. ‘Sure she wore next to nothing. I used to blush for her sometimes with Mr. Connor about ‒ but then nakedness seems to be the thing these days. And didn’t he worship her. Sometimes in that bed …’ She broke off, and the blush stained even the skin at the back of her neck.

  Annie was perpetuating the myth of Lotti and Connor, I thought ‒ and in the beginning, before Lotti grew bored, it must have been the truth. Annie was recalling that time, living in it, as she still lived in the promise of all the good things there were to have been, and forgetting the telephone call from Brendan about the bridge that had betrayed their rendezvous and had forecast the end. To talk only of the good times was her way to guard the myth.

  I took a few steps forward to announce to them both that I was there, but as I did so, Annie moved quickly to the white built-in cupboard that lined one side of the room. ‘Will you look at this now …’ She began folding back the doors to reveal the long rack of hanging clothes. ‘Wasn’t there a holy row with Lady Maude about putting this in ‒ said she was ruining the panelling. But wasn’t it half done by then …’

  Eagerly, greedily, Mrs. O’Shea’s fingers flicked along the hangers, pulling out a garment here and there, letting it fall back among the others. ‘And here,’ Annie said, opening another part of the cupboard, ‘the drawers for her underwear and things ‒ woollies, scarves, shelves for handbags. Feel this, will you, Mrs. O’Shea? Vicuna, she called it. And this ‒ this is antelope. And the gloves ‒ drawers full of them. It used to take me an hour sometimes to pick up and fold and put away what she had left around. Untidy, she was ‒ but then wasn’t it a pleasure to be doing things for her, and handling the like of what she wore. I’m tellin’ you, the house was a different place in those days.

  ‘Ah, but these are me favourites.’ She had reached the last section of the cupboard. ‘I just love to put me hands on these ‒ four fur coats and five jackets. And don’t be askin’ me the names of them, because some of them I never heard of in me life before. Now look you ‒ Ah, Holy Mother!’

  I had been expecting to see the ocelot of Brendan’s memory. Instead, there was nothing at all, just a row of empty hangers, swinging wildly as Annie’s agitated fingers plucked at them as if to call back what was gone.

  ‘Mother of God, where are they? Have they been stolen, do you think? ‒ and me never knowing it. ’Tis weeks since I put me head in here.’

  ‘Or sold,’ Mrs. O’Shea offered dryly.

  ‘Sold? Whoever would ‒’ Annie spun on her heels.

  The expression of worried concern on her face was compounded by surprise. She looked at me, and then past me.

  ‘Miss ‒ Mr. Connor!’

  ‘Have you shown enough, Annie?’ I turned also; he was striving to hold himself in check, to keep anger below the surface of his cold enquiry. I had the feeling that he wanted to bundle all of us out of here, to close the gaping wardrobe, to shout his rage and slam the door on us. Annie had flinched visibly; it took her a moment to find words.

  ‘I was just checking for moths, you know, Mr. Connor. It does have to be done from time to time. And Mrs. O’Shea just stepped in, you might say …’

  ‘And Miss Maura?’ The question was asked of me directly.

  ‘I wasn’t invited,’ I said. ‘I just watched.’

  ‘None of you were invited, if it comes to that. All right, Annie ‒ no more!’ he added quickly, as she began further protestations. ‘We’ll have done with it. No ‒ leave it. I’ll close them.’

  ‘But the furs, Mr. Connor ‒ all those beautiful furs?’

  ‘Are none of your business,’ he finished brutally. ‘Now if you’ll all just get out …?’

  Mrs. O’Shea swept past me, and then past Connor, and her sniff was audible. After a second’s hesitation Annie almost ran to catch her up, as if she feared to pass Connor at the doorway alone. Out in the passage Mrs. O’Shea’s words came clearly back.

  ‘Sold, of course. Some people have no reverence for the dead. Money is all they care about …’

  It was my turn to go. I felt ashamed to have been there at all, but I tried not to lower my eyes as I came close to Connor. As I reached him, his hand shot out and caught my arm. His grip hurt, but I hadn’t the power to protest it. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I shouldn’t have been here.’

  His grip relaxed a little as if he were surer now that I would not run from him, sure the way he had been last night when he had kissed me. He drew me back into the room so that we were out of sight of Annie and Mrs. O’Shea if they had lingered in the passage.

  ‘I’m glad you’ve seen it,’ he said. ‘This was Lotti ‒ all of her. All that she was is in this room ‒ selfish, vain, self-loving. She loved her own image.’ My gaze went around the room once more, as he meant it to, coming to
rest, inevitably, on the bed, enormous, voluptuous, silken. ‘Yes, that too,’ he said. The grip became hard again. ‘Lotti was great in bed ‒ but greedy. It was her own gratification that counted. She didn’t know what it was to love.’

  I said, ‘I don’t want to hear this. It isn’t my business.’

  ‘It could be,’ he said, jerking me a little. ‘It could be ‒ because it was my business. Haven’t you been hearing about Lotti from other people? ‒ from Brendan and from Praeger?’

  I opened my mouth, but he didn’t let me speak. ‘Oh, I hear things,’ he said, ‘I know about your afternoon with Praeger, the little drive to the bridge. Didn’t you talk about Lotti there? Well, didn’t you?’ The demand was accompanied by a shake. ‘And didn’t Brendan fill your ears with Lotti last night, so that that was all you could say to me when you came in? Well, now you know what Lotti was. What ought I to do? ‒ mourn her forever? She wasn’t worth it. Brendan and Praeger know that ‒ and you know it. You know all about Lotti.’

  I jerked back from him. ‘Don’t any of you understand? I don’t want to know about Lotti.’

  ‘You do ‒ or you wouldn’t have been in this room tonight. I want you to know about Lotti. So that it’s over and done with. I want you to forget about Lotti. There’s no mystery about her. All that’s left of her is here, and that doesn’t matter a damn.’

  I looked once more about this silken room; the mirrored images of ourselves were cast back at us, but also there, though the mirrors could give no precise definition to her, was Lotti ‒ Lotti triumphant in the vast bed, Lotti combing her bright hair before the dressing-table, Lotti laughing, flaunting, mocking, and Connor unable to withstand her, Connor saying that none of these memories mattered a damn, and still his eyes blazing in his head with love and hate and desire.

  ‘But she’s hard to forget, isn’t she? Your Lotti is hard to forget.’

  He let me go without a word.