King of Morning, Queen of Day (11 page)

The sadness of the romantic imagination is to be ever disappointed that the reality never matches the imagining of it. Always in reality there are the shadows where the light will never reach, the wallpaper peeling by the skirting board, the hall stand missing a cherub and with a cracked tulip tile.

I have said I was glad to be leaving Dublin; I did not say I was glad to be home.

They did not even come to welcome me. Their only daughter, and they sent Mrs. O’Carolan in a trap with Paddy-Joe. Oh, yes, it was good to see Mrs. O’C and Paddy-Joe again, and their delight in seeing me was honestly transparent—Mrs. O’C could hardly speak a word; she must have wrung out an entire week’s supply of handkerchiefs.

From my first glimpse of the familiar pillared facade, I could feel it. Craigdarragh had changed. It was more than the inevitable disappointment of romantic idealism; I felt that the entire spirit of the house had been changed. The autumn light no longer shone into those inaccessible places; it had been defeated by shadows. Oh, Mummy and Daddy greeted me lovingly enough, there on the steps. Mummy cried and Daddy harrumphed and harrahed into his beard though it was clear to all that he was on the verge of tears himself, but there was a tautness, a reserve between them, and especially toward me, as if I were a guest in a house full of secrets. I can best describe it as a darkness behind the eyes, a preoccupation with something that consumed all their energy in its concealment.

And in Craigdarragh the blackthorns leaned against the hall stand, the apple-cinnamon-bramble perfume of Mrs. O’Carolan’s tarts seeped out of the kitchen into every corner and cranny, and the October sun through the cupola cast a rose of light on the stairs, but it felt infected. It felt tired and decaying, as if the autumn had entered and filled the rooms with its placid dying.

At supper tonight Mrs. O’C excelled herself; all my favourites, and I think it gave her more delight in the serving of them than I took in the devouring, but in spite of her best efforts, what should have been a joyous occasion was tense, taut, tiring. Whenever Mummy and Daddy asked me about the clinic and Dr. Orr and the general state of Dublin, it was evident that they had no real interest in my answers—they asked merely because it was polite to ask. Whenever I asked about what had been happening at home, they gave me very straight, very considered answers. When I said that they seemed a little distant, Mummy replied that so much had happened to me, so many hurtful and terrible things in so short a space of time, that it was almost as if I were a new Emily; that they knew only how to treat the old Emily, and that was no longer suitable for a woman in my
ahem
position.

I said that the new Emily was the old Emily, that I was more like shoots and leaves on an old tree than a whole new person. Daddy cleared his throat then, in that way of his when he is going to say something he does not want to have to say, and said that they had a lot of
readjusting
to do. My own mother and father treating me like a stranger at my own table.

Readjusting to what? I asked, and then I realised. They were ashamed of me. Ashamed. I was the final disgrace. By now it was all over the county—see her, Emily Desmond, pregnant, and not even an idea of the father, much less married. Shameless, shameless. What kind of people would let that happen to a child of theirs? what kind of parents?

Never mind that this child was forced upon me, never mind that I was violated,
raped.
Why were they afraid to say the word? All they could see was Dr. Edward Garret Desmond, the once-respected astronomer, on one side and Mrs. Caroline Desmond, the renowned poetess and Celtic scholar, on the other, and a big wobbling bulge in the middle.

I looked at them, at the expressions of mock concern on their faces. Suddenly I hated them so much, I wished them dead and damned on the very spot. I screamed something, I cannot remember what, sent dishes knives forks cruets and all Mrs. O’Carolan’s good work flying, and rushed off to my room.

I can still remember the pale, staring faces. In my room I paced up and down, up and down. I wanted to be angry, I enjoyed being angry, I kept being angry because there was so much more of the anger I had wanted them to see. I found things to be angry at: stupid, inanimate things which took on stubborn wills and minds of their own—my left shoe, which stuck when I tried to kick it off, so I pulled and pulled and pulled until the laces snapped, then threw it against the wall, bringing down the lamp. I picked the lamp up and threw it down again. If it had to fall, it would fall when and where I chose it to fall, and it broke into two pieces.

I couldn’t sleep. My head was bursting with that top-of-the-neck pain you get when you are too angry to be capable of expressing it. Hours passed. Realising that I would in all likelihood be awake to see the dawn, I decided to read something. I do not know what it was that made me choose that book:
The Countryside Companion to the Wild Flowers of Britain and Ireland.
Summer and its wildflowers were long dead, and botany was never my strongest suit, yet I felt compelled to read the book. Propped up in bed, I opened it where the paper naturally fell and something slipped out onto the counterpane—something gossamer and moonlit and light as a breath.

The pair of faery’s wings.

I picked them up delicately in my fingers, laid them on the palm of my hand, looked at them for a long time. Then I closed my hand and crushed them into dust.

This morning I did not want to see them. Whatever apology they offered, whatever apology they demanded, they would only have made me angry again. On the excuse of morning sickness, I rang for Mrs. O’Carolan to bring me breakfast in my room, which she did. At least I have one friend in Craigdarragh.

I went to the bathroom to wash, and as I did, I saw a thing contemptible in its familiarity in the light of a totally new revelation. At the end of the landing by the linen press was the small door that led to the old servants’ staircase and their quarters in the attics. In all my living memory it has been locked shut; Mummy says that the floorboards are not safe. Mrs. O’Carolan keeps a small bed-parlour beside the potato store—the heat from the range is good for her rheumatism, she insists. The rooms under the eaves have not been used since before I was born. This morning, the door stood the tiniest, the very least crack ajar. How could I not explore?

Such treasure that had been buried in those servants’ rooms and forgotten! The first room was filled with old cracked albums and crumbling boxes of photographs: soft, blurry daguerreotypes of upright moustached gentlemen in caps and bloomers proud beside their new bicycles; ladies who somehow looked cool and elegant in ruffled silks and taffeta on what must have been a stifling summer day; sportsmen in tweed jackets and knee boots leaning on staves; fox hounds too quick for the lens a blur about their feet; little boys in sailor suits, about to burst into tears; gents with hands thrust nonchalantly into pockets, lolling about the enclosure at the Sligo Races; tinker families posed self-consciously in their doorways, surly and unwashed looking; girls in first communion dresses standing shyly in front of Drumcliffe High Cross. Boating excursions, tennis parties, expeditions by jaunting car to local beauty spots, windswept family picnics in the dunes at Strandhill, weddings, baptisms, Easters, Christmases: all those times, all those moments, captured and frozen. I flicked through box after box of dusty, sepia-toned memories pressed like flowers in a Bible … and I stopped. The photograph was of a girl of about thirteen, standing by the sundial in the sunken garden. On the face of the sundial was something I could not quite distinguish; it had moved just as the photograph had been taken and the plate was blurred, but it looked like a tiny person, no more than a foot high. The caption read:
Caroly: Wood nymph: The Time Garden, August 1881.

In the next room watery light through the streaming skylight cast strange, rippling shadows over the bare floorboards. Everywhere were piled trunks, up to the ceiling in some places. When I opened them they turned out to be filled with old clothes.

But what clothes! In the first I opened were pure silk hunting stocks; white kid gloves still folded in their tissue wrappings; voluminous skirts split for sidesaddle riding; whips, crops, sticks, and over-the-knee hacking boots; hunting pinks and dubbined britches stiff with French chalk. One trunk held nothing but hats for every conceivable occasion from the most sober to the most preposterous: black Brussels lace funeral veils; bird of paradise concoctions bursting with fruit and feathers for the Fairy house Races; smart straw boaters, ribbons still crisp and clean. In another I found fringed parasols, painted Chinese fans, and mismatched pairs of pearl-studded opera gloves; in a third, party dresses and ball gowns, all as fresh and clean as if they had only last night been discarded after the Dublin season and laid in their trunks by Mrs. O’Carolan. But best of all, most beautiful of all, was what lay within the trunk directly beneath the skylight: a Chantilly silk wedding dress. I have never seen a dress so beautiful before, and I never shall again. When I am to be a bride, I shall be wed in such a dress of Chantilly taffeta and creme organdy. I lifted it out of its folds and held it against me; there was no mirror in the trunk room so I could only imagine how I looked. It felt made for me, hidden away in that trunk in the old servants’ rooms all these years, waiting for my discovery. But I did not try it on. Somehow, the idea of it actually touching my flesh disturbed me.

It was the third room that I adored most of all. Pushing open the door, I saw a figure in the middle of the bare floor. It gave me quite a start before I realised it was only the reflection of my silly self in a full-length mirror. Even now, as I try to write down my impressions on entering it, I find that the only way to do justice to how the room revealed itself to me is to recall it as a series of photographs. Sepia: that was the first and overriding impression—of a creamy brown light that seemed to be made up of memories of things past. Stillness: motes of dust hung suspended in the rays of chestnut light; the rafters were festooned with bunches of flowers, set there to dry and desiccate in the still air, long forgotten. A strange perfume haunted the room, ubiquitous, unidentifiable, like the ashes of roses. The ochre light was broken into planes and shafts by the rafters and hanging posies of flowers. In one corner was a beekeeper’s hat, veil, and smoke can. In the shadows where the sepia light did not reach, indistinct stepped pyramids were revealed by my inspection to be rolls of piled wallpaper. There in the shadows, the scent of sun-dried paper, soft and yellow and musty, was magical.

I do not recall how long I stood there as the room revealed itself to me; I was, for the most part, simply overwhelmed. That in the fifteen years I have spent exploring every nook and cranny of this house and grounds I should never have known of these hidden rooms before amazes me now, but then, I stood spellbound, setting the bunches of drying flowers swaying with a touch, tracing the patterns of the old wallpapers and friezes.

I would have stayed longer, but in the distance I could hear Mrs. O’C calling me to lunch. That time already! With reluctance I closed the door and took one last look back into the room of dried flowers. I saw something. I am certain I saw something. No trick of the light, I saw reflected in the mirror the Chantilly lace wedding dress, standing, as if before an altar, and where the body should have been, was sheaf upon sheaf of dried flowers.

October 26, 1913

Craigdarragh

Drumcliffe

County Sligo

My Dear Dr. Chambers,

I trust that this letter, coming as it does after so long a period since our paths last crossed, will not prove too great a surprise; I sincerely hope that it finds you in the best of health and fortune. Perhaps you recall the occasion of our last meeting—five years ago, at the testimonial dinner in the Glendalough House Hotel for our old beloved Headmaster, Dr. Ames. Certainly, the evening is still vivid in my memory. We were seated opposite each other and I recall enjoying a most stimulating conversation on the Home Rule question and the problem of Ulster, those most perennial of chestnuts which have, once again, reared their shaggy heads. I had meant, many times, to congratulate you on your appointment as successor to the post as Headmaster of Balrothery Endowed School. The oversight was most remiss of me; permit me to extend my sincerest best wishes for your past, and undoubted future, successes.

It is in your official capacity as Headmaster that, truth be told, I am writing to you. Please excuse my forwardness in so doing. Only the most extreme of circumstances, you must understand, would force me to such a pass. Alas, you cannot but be aware of the unfortunate lot that has befallen the Desmond household these past few months. The popular press doubtless penetrates even as shady a cloister as Balrothery Endowed, and, as a consequence, I am forced to put Craigdarragh and its lands onto the open market and content myself with a humbler estate in life. To this end, I am inquiring concerning the possibility of a teaching position at the school. I understand that you have experienced difficulties in recruiting staff of a suitable calibre in the disciplines of the sciences and mathematics—disciplines with which I am most intimately acquainted by dint of my former profession. I would consider it the greatest personal favour if you were to hold me in consideration should such a vacancy occur in the near future. You will need no assuring over my academic credentials, which are impeccable, and I know I can trust you to treat any slur the public domain may have cast upon my character with the contempt and disregard it so properly merits. I am sure that you will need no convincing that my services can be of enormous benefit to your establishment and, in concluding, may I express the fervent hope that you will look favourably upon my petition, and wish you the best of health, wealth, and happiness.

Yours Sincerely,

Edward Garret Desmond, Ph.D.