Under the Rose Page 6

  Then his mother began to fail. She withdrew herself so slowly that her death, at the end of his third season, was simply confirmation of a forefelt loss. The house, empty now and more of a problem than ever – since he had only one pension to count on – tormented and distracted him from his mourning so that, feeling guilty, he suffered even more. Yet he could not bear to sell it, although the drains were bad, rewiring urgent, the roof sagged and moss, soft as old silk, was creeping, loop after loop, like a crocheted shawl, over the hump of the gable. He could not afford a caretaker but friends discovered a handsome, deficient young man who, in return for board and lodging, would look after the place. Suddenly shy of his own house, the captain got a job in the next off-season taking skiing parties to Switzerland and for eighteen months was hardly home at all. Now and then it occurred to him that, with the young man’s help, he could run a chicken farm or take paying guests, save his house and give up the guiding. But each time he thought of it, the young man’s mild, beautiful, mad eyes flashed in front of his vision and he rejected the idea.

  The last group on the last pilgrimage of his eighteen-month stint was a small one and the captain got to know them better than usual. Three sisters were the core of the party: the Miss Laceys from Sligo with whom he played bridge and pretended to flirt. He could tell that this was as much masculine attention as they had ever commanded, and they had not reached Lourdes at all before he had sensed, loneliness having quickened his apprehension of such things, that they were going to pray for husbands.

  ‘Daddy’, Miss Kitty Lacey told him, ‘died last year.’

  Frisky as gun dogs at the season’s start, they were emerging from a year’s mourning.

  They lived in deep country, he found, in unrelieved idleness: a bickering family which had carried childhood games into pre-middle age. (They still, they admitted, liked to make toffee and had a Christmas tree with secret presents.) They played tennis and croquet and clock golf on the lawn. Dance? They loved to and had given ‘hops’ in the front room, rolling back the carpet and inviting Daddy and a few of his younger friends – until last year. All three belonged to the local tennis and mountaineering clubs and all three took continental holidays together. They even played bridge, as now with the captain, sitting at the same table. What man would have the courage to drive a wedge between them? That none had might be guessed from the unwavering hockey-field voices. They were friendly and crossed muscular legs with nonchalance. Maisie was forty, Kitty thirty-five and Jenny, the baby, thirty-two. It was on their passports. Unabused but a trifle neglected like that of nuns, their skin had the firm, unaromatic texture of linen long preserved in drawers. The captain, who would be free in ten days – after this tour he would have six months in which to tend his estate and decide about his future – watched them with understanding and an occasional stab of horror. (The same sensuous fascination froze him when the post-mistress at home larded his letters with her gummy spittle, rummaging with lubricated finger for the envelope on which a little extra postage must be paid.) The sisters were not identical. The eldest, either more intelligent or merely more resigned, had, visibly, set herself to cultivate inner resources. She had learned French, tutored by an Irish priest who had studied in Belgium, and all through the trip was to be seen, in lounges after dinner, fingering her way down the columns of France Soir. The captain, remembering country aunts who had died in maidenly loneliness akin to madness, pitied the Miss Laceys. Kitty and Jenny’s noisy laughter – empty vessels – had a desperate note and he had seen them sidle with provocative demureness around French railway officials who responded with icy courtesy.

  ‘Wouldn’t you think that trio would have the sense to divide up?’ Mrs O’Keefe, an elderly widow who had been three times to Lourdes – it was the nicest way she knew of taking a holiday – was interested in the Miss Laceys’ predicament.

  The captain said something about the Miss Laceys being nice girls.

  ‘Isn’t that the shame of it!’ she agreed with him. She sighed: ‘Mind you, three at one go is a tall order even for Our Lady of Lourdes! It’d have to be a real miracle!’

  *

  On the return journey, a lightning plane strike stranded the party in Paris. A couple of the older ladies dreaded the crossing by boat and as nobody, it turned out, was pressed for time or money, the group voted to spend a few days at the Hôtel de la Gare.

  ‘Captain! Captain! Maybe we’ll have our miracle now!’ Mrs O’Keefe hissed exultantly up the well of the stairs as he descended for dinner. An expert pilgrim, she got dressed faster than anyone and posted herself on the route to the dining-room, ready to pounce on him. ‘Look! Look!’ She nodded at the bar.

  The captain saw the three Miss Laceys sitting on high stools, laughing over gin fizzes with two men. He raised his eyebrows. ‘Well! How did that happen?’ The men looked nice chaps, and the sisters were chattering nineteen to the dozen. Miss Kitty Lacey’s laugh ricocheted across the lounge. ‘Ca, ca, ca, ca!’ High and repetitious like the cry of an anxious crow. Maisie, as if to emphasize a lack of hope, was sitting on the edge and turned half away from the others.

  Mrs O’Keefe had overheard all. She lowered her voice. ‘They met them’, she muttered, ‘at the tennis tournament at Mount Merrion two years ago. Kitty and Jenny partnered them in the mixed semi-finals. One’s an architect. The other works in a bank. They’re staying in the hotel. English!’

  The captain’s mind raced in unison with hers: ‘Catholics?’ he whispered.

  Mrs O’Keefe drew back in annoyance. ‘Captain! I’m surprised at you! After the present pope’s encouragement of mixed marriages! Anyway, they could turn.’ She leaned forward to his ear. ‘The drawback is’, she whispered, ‘that there’s only two!’ Again she withdrew herself, this time to give him one of her fixed-eyed, pursed-lipped, slow and ponderous nods.

  ‘Ah!’ agreed the captain.

  ‘We’, she prompted, ‘can invite one of them to make up a party after dinner. I’ll get Miss Taylor to play so we’ll only need one to make a fourth. Maisie,’ she judged. ‘Then the men can invite the other two out on the tiles.’ She laughed with the innocent vulgarity to which the captain was becoming used in pious women.

  The plan worked. Maisie’s sisters took a boisterous, shamefaced leave of her and had not come back with their beaux by the time the bridge party went to bed. It had been a strained little session, for Mrs O’Keefe, frustrated by Maisie’s presence from discussing her sisters’ prospects, was too fidgety to concentrate on cards; Maisie played badly too so that by the end of the evening the pair, who were partners, had lost quite a bit.

  ‘Poor me,’ Maisie lamented as she paid up.

  ‘Ah well! Unlucky in cards you know!’ said Miss Taylor abstractedly and was kicked by Mrs O’Keefe.

  The captain’s sympathies, repelled by Maisie’s play, returned to her on the boomerang of pity. ‘Well, this has been an agreeable evening indeed!’ He drained his glass. ‘One of the pleasantest on the trip. But all good things and all that. Remember, tomorrow we have to rise early for our tour of the City of Light.’

  The ladies lumbered upstairs, slowed by drink and confidences. Walking behind them – he had paused to say something to the concierge – the captain saw Maisie’s box-shaped form tilt towards that of Mrs O’Keefe. ‘Oh super! A regular charmer!’ Mrs O’Keefe’s hiss floated down the stairs to him. ‘Isn’t it funny, now, he never got married!’ He went into his room and locked the door. He polished his shoes, inserted the wooden trees and carefully tied the laces over them. He had a shower, gave himself a friction with eau-de-Cologne and remembered that the golden rule was to keep things from getting personal. Be nice as pie but – off parade, off parade. A bit sticky sometimes. He climbed into bed to read a war memoir in which the human element was considered from a safe, abstracting distance.

  Next morning the blue-pennanted busload visited the Sacré Cœur, the Sainte Chapelle, Saint Sulpice and Notre Dame. The pilgrims, weary of churches, gabbled prayers, co
llected the available indulgences and settled back in their seats with a profane zest when the captain proposed a drive into the country. He took them towards Rambouillet, along roads where mistletoe hung hairy smudges on the limbs of poplars, and sounds were spasms in the air. Returning, they decided to stretch their legs in the Bois de Boulogne and gaped at crisp-figured riders on distant bridle paths. The lake was diamond bright.

  ‘Golly!’ Jenny Lacey squeezed old Miss Taylor’s arm. ‘Doesn’t it thrill you to be here? Doesn’t it make your blood run faster?’ Heels puncturing the clay, she took off to sniff the passionate humours of the wood.

  Kitty Lacey flung out her arms. ‘I want to hug you, captain,’ she threatened and did so with a buoyant gesture.

  ‘Oho!’ Mrs O’Keefe whispered. ’Tis easy seen a gay old time was had last night!’ A conniving elbow stabbed the captain’s waistcoat. As they got back into the bus, he noted that Maisie was wearing sensible flat shoes.

  *

  The next two days the captain left the group to their own devices until dinner time. He slipped off each morning, avoiding Mrs O’Keefe who was lurking at loose ends in the lounge, and did not return before seven. He spent one morning looking at pistols in an antique shop, another reading The Times in a bar where he partook of a liver paste sandwich and some Beaujolais by the glass, then meandered through grimy streets in the bleak vicinity of the Santé prison, coming in time to the Jardin de l’Observatoire where he sat by the lake and felt lonely for Stephen’s Green. At dinner, Mrs O’Keefe twitted him on his ‘mysterious double life’, remarking that things moved faster when one was abroad, didn’t he think?

  The two younger Miss Laceys had meanwhile had their hair done. (‘Paris, ha, ha,’ said Miss Taylor, ‘has gone to their heads!’) A sculptural cut, removing the fuzz that had shadowed their faces, revealed hitherto disguised rapacities.

  On those two nights the captain played bridge again with Maisie and the two elder women while Jenny and Kitty went dancing with their Englishmen.

  ‘Toodloo!’ screamed Kitty, waving an arm bright with a dozen plastic bangles.

  ‘Keep your eye on sis, captain! She’ll clean you out!’

  ‘Still waters run deep! She’s a cardsharper!’

  ‘And a cannibal man-eater!’ They screamed with laughter.

  Their sister winced. They were gone.

  ‘Whew!’ The captain caught Maisie’s embarrassed eye. She laughed back at him and he was pleased that she seemed in better form. Probably decided those young chaps weren’t worth being jealous over! He couldn’t have agreed more. Anyone who would put up with those screeching termagants…. Well, Mrs O’Keefe had shown judgement in isolating Maisie from the quartet. She was clearly several cuts above them…. Maisie and Mrs O’Keefe won back their losses that night.

  The next day was to be the pilgrims’ last. The strike had been settled and seats were available on a plane the following morning. In the afternoon the hotel was taken over by a provincial wedding party which sang songs that reminded the Irish group of some of their own and struck up a gaiety in which they soon became involved. They were in the thick of it when the captain returned from his stroll. Someone was playing the accordion and a pair of highly liquored Frenchmen – rural types in stiff suits – had threaded arms through the armpits of Maisie and Mrs O’Keefe and were stamping about to the tune.

  ‘Captain! Come on! Where have you been all day!’

  The barman handed him a glass of something and Maisie’s partner surrendered her. She was an excellent dancer. Light-footed.

  ‘I’ve always said’, the captain told her, ‘the best dancers come from down the country. Where are the other two?’

  ‘They’ve been out with their fellows since morning,’ she said. ‘They’re letting the last day be the longest.’

  ‘Well so can we,’ he comforted her and whirled her off again, for the accordionist had started up a waltz. The captain had won prizes for waltzing with his mother and told Maisie about this. ‘My father was killed when I was twelve. I used to take her to dances from the time I left school, but I never got a look in after the first dance or so. She was so popular.’

  ‘And she never remarried?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You must miss her.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The hotel service had been disrupted by the wedding, so guests had to be content with a supper of cold sandwiches, mostly left-overs. They ate them in the pauses between dancing.

  ‘It’s mad,’ Maisie said. ‘Like an Irish country hotel.’

  ‘It’s fun,’ said the captain.

  At 2 a.m. he sponged his forehead with a damp handkerchief. ‘Been overdoing it,’ he apologized. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’d better retire. Ladies,’ he turned towards Maisie who was resting on a couch. He sketched his usual departing bow and toppled into her lap.

  There was a snigger from one of the dancing French, too far gone themselves to interpret the situation correctly.

  ‘Captain! Oh! Captain!’

  Maisie had been thrown backwards by his impact and now he lay prostrated across her breast. Male smells breathed into her gasping mouth. She tried to lift him but he seemed to have gone rigid and her fingers merely managed to peel his jacket up his back. She probed the intimacy of flesh sweating through his shirt.

  ‘Someone …’ she begged. ‘Please … Mrs O’Keefe!’ She pulled the flaps of his coat down again. Hugging him violently to her, hands braced beneath his armpits, she got him into a half sitting, half reclining position beside her on the couch. People gathered round at last.

  ‘Captain! Captain!’

  ‘Monsieur le Capitaine! Mais qu’est-ce qu’il a? Il est soûl?’

  ‘No, no, he must be ill!’

  ‘There’s a medicine chest in our room! Please, Monsieur, veuillez bien porter le capitaine…. Do you mind carrying the captain….’

  The accordionist and a friend lugged him up the stairs and along a corridor. His eyes opened, glared. ‘Just a touch!’ he kept gasping out. ‘Nothing to worry about … passes over … malaria….’ O’Keefe and Maisie clucked along behind him. ‘Mind his head now!’ ‘No, no!’ he heard Maisie squawking. ‘Not here. This is my room!’ Like one of the three bears. ‘Mais alors?’ the accordionist complained. The captain, the captain thought he understood him to say, was no feather-weight. If she didn’t want him here, why didn’t she speak up sooner? He wasn’t a paid stretcher bearer. (‘Elles en font des manières, ces gonzesses!’) A door closed. ‘Put him on the bed,’ O’Keefe’s voice cut in. ‘Have sense! The man’s ill!’ ‘Yes, yes,’ the captain tried to shout. ‘Ill! It’ll pass. Only cover me up!’ His body was shaking with the cold. He hadn’t had a bout like this in years. His teeth, his very bones, were clattering with the cold. ‘More blankets,’ he commanded. ‘Hold my hand. Tightly. More tightly. More blankets. More. It’ll pass. It’ll pass.’ He clutched a hand, closed his eyes and heaved like an agonizing fish: his whole body leaping in spasms from the bed. ‘Just a few minutes. Never takes more,’ he heard himself say. ‘Half an hour at most. Hold me, Mummy! Mummy, hold me. Hold me tight. Lie beside me. Keep me warm.’

  When he awoke from the nightmares that always came with his bouts, he felt her beside him, turned absurdly the other way so that their bottoms bumped and the arm he was clinging to held her pinioned like a clamp. When she felt him stir, she unclenched his fingers and sat up.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea, captain?’ she asked, brushing down her skirt, tidying her blouse. ‘I have a spirit lamp and tea and sugar.’ (Wise virgins, they carried plastic-wrapped props against every incursion of the unforeseen.)

  ‘What? What?’ the captain groaned, his head throbbing less than he would have liked. There was something to be faced he could already tell. A trifle … what? Unorthodox? He could smell scenty stuff. An animal smell not his. He closed his eyes hopefully. Sleeping dogs. Let lie! The malaria dreams rushed at him.

  ‘Tea!’ said Maisie with assurance. ‘Wake up,
captain. It will do you good.’

  He sat up. ‘Where … your sisters?’ The three had shared a room.

  ‘With Mrs O’Keefe.’ She was laying out plastic cups. ‘Feel better? I can see you do!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good!’ She plumped his pillow efficiently.

  ‘You gave me some stuff?’

  ‘Quinine.’

  He laughed. ‘By golly you’re a good nurse. I should marry you!’

  She laughed, ‘crisply’, enjoying the role.

  ‘And get me cheap? Have you a drop of Scots blood, captain?’

  Mild whiff of scent from her.

  ‘You called me “Mummy”,’ she told him.

  He blushed and decided to expire again.

  A minute later Mrs O’Keefe bounced in in a satin kimono to know ‘how’s the patient?’

  Maisie told her he was in the best of form. ‘Been proposing to me,’ she said. ‘I think that’s a good sign, don’t you?’

  Mrs O’Keefe’s gargling intake of breath was like the last exodus of water from a bath. ‘We-ell! Of all the miracles!’ (He opened an eye, saw her fling her arms around Maisie’s neck, and closed it quickly.) ‘This is what I’ve been praying for!’ gabbled she. ‘Wait till I tell the others! I can’t think of nicer news! I declare I’m happier than yourselves! My heartiest congratulations! I’ll say a prayer this minute to Saint Bernadette!’

  ‘Mrs O’Keefe! We were joking!’ He heard Maisie’s squawk.

  ‘Joke! After spending the night together! Sure the whole hotel has its eye on the pair of ye!’

  The captain trembled.