Chloe (17 page)

‘Shiklo!' he murmured, kissing her nose tenderly. ‘Shagama life!'

F
ergus Halloran was portly and of a cheerful demeanour expressed at once by the red blooms to his cheeks and the wheezing smile permanently worn. His walk was distinctive; whether striding over his farm or strolling through town he would hoick and twist his trousers every seven strides. His medicine-ball belly, which dictated this gait, spoke too of the fat of his land; the sweet waxy potatoes, the soda farls baked fresh each day, the buttermilk. Gus's hands were thick and rosy, with white wiry hairs curling around the sides and sprouting in thatches along the fingers. Not unlike a good joint of pork. Around the trunk of his neck, St Christopher dangled in gold from a large belcher chain. Gus also wore a gold ring set with jet which acted as a corset to his little finger and gave it the appearance of an hourglass waist. His eyes glinted and shone, catching the light and colour from his dense, bristly pale hair. His voice sang when he spoke though what he spoke was, for the most part, a foreign language whose meaning could be insinuated from the accompanying facial gesticulation.

‘Dear knows don't bother yer barney! Come, have a drap of scald and some tattie oaten.'

Sentences were invariably prefixed with ‘Jayz!' and finished off with a triumphant ‘Hey nye?'

The Halloran homestead was a fat little cottage, whitewashed and with green doors and frames. It was dark inside but not gloomy for an abundance of ornaments (‘dornamints') offered glints of colour from every direction. Flagstone floors were barely covered by threadbare rugs but the curves and dents of the slabs were pleasing to the stockinged foot. The
Irish Times
and
Racing Post
gathered in piles beside every chair and a stack of them waited bravely by the vast wood-burning stove. Photographs of Gus's beloved late wife Maebh crowded the window-sills and smiled out from the walls. Chloë's bedroom was small and reminded her of one in a convent; a plain, wooden single bed with sheets and a grey blanket, stained canvas curtains at the small, deep-silled window, a faded and buckled print in a glassless frame of a landscape that could be Ireland or could be anywhere else, a photograph of Maebh grinning away in the fifties, an old mahogany cupboard slightly askew whose door hung ajar permanently.

Life on the farm was gentle and rosy and would have suited Chloë well had it been more than merely conjectural day-dreams on the plane over to Belfast. Reality rendered them obsolete.

Ballygorm Manor is an imposing neoclassical residence concealed from the road by a long, forested drive and ringed from the world by an old stone wall mottled with moss and fringed with flops of ivy. It sits in a peaceful valley of its own just up and outside of Glenarm and off the Ballymena road. The sea is near but you cannot see it; its proximity, however, is evident from the light bursting from over the hill. Chloë's bedroom is furnished liberally with antiques and has an
en suite
bathroom. The bed is queen-size with scrolled walnut ends and is laid with fine linen, covered by an imposing dark grey and maroon silk eiderdown. There is no New Zealand rug beneath it; Chloë checked. The curtains are from Liberty's and the window offers views out over the parkland to the woods: ash, hazel and ancient oak. The carpet is flaxen and luxurious and a small rectangular kilim lies to the left-hand side of the bed. There isn't one to the right so Chloë has obediently got into and out of bed from the left.

And the left, she fears, is the wrong side, for she has not been very happy during her first weeks here.

Not happy at all, really.

Rather lonely, actually.

Gus Halloran is an easy six foot tall with a lithe physique defying his seventieth year. His hair is slicked back meticulously and waxed with precision; yellowing, rather like the whites of his eyes. His full moustache is off-white too, but the odd dark whisker whispers out and tells of its former jet-black glory. Gus does not wear any jewellery and his finely tailored corduroys remain pristine throughout the day. He wears dark lambswool V-neck sweaters, lightly checked shirts and sober ties. When he goes out into the estate he adds a tweed jacket and long waxed coat; when he goes into town, he leaves the waxed coat behind.

His accent belies any trace of his heritage. When Chloë confided her anticipation of abundant ‘begorra's and ‘b'jayz's, Gus said ‘Eton' at her rather witheringly. There are no photographs of Maebh for there has never been a Maebh and, at the moment, Chloë, who is a little troubled, is hardly surprised. Gus's manners are indeed impeccable and he has ensured that Chloë has everything she might need for her comfort (there is a small transistor radio in her room, a sewing kit, a run of Dickens and a cut-glass jar filled with cotton-wool balls). He accepts Chloë's gratitude graciously and they dine together every evening at seven. Mostly, they eat in silence. Between courses, Chloë might offer an opening into gentle conversation. Gus answers her directly, succinctly and politely, but invites no repartee. It is not that he is
unfriendly
nor does he seem to mind her presence; he just does not seem that bothered by her at all. Chloë, who has always judged herself on the response by others, feels hurt and unsteady.

There is no Maebh but there is Mary who has kept Chloë's pecker up at times when it has started to droop. Mary is housekeeper and calls Gus ‘Mr Halloran'; not so much from courtesy, for he is happy for first-name terms, but from habit: she has been at Ballygorm for twenty-five years. Now, Mary
is
portly with a becoming blush to her cheek and an exemplary grasp of Ulster vernacular.

‘Bout ye!' she said to Chloë on first seeing her. ‘I'm taking a wee skite to the veggy patch – preys for the champ – come for a dander witmee?' Chloë jumped at the opportunity for, after showing her to her room, Gus had disappeared and a timid call of his name had hung unanswered in the silence of the spacious hall.

Presuming the champ to be a disease that praying and skiting might cure, Chloë turned her thoughts to whatever a
dander witmee
was. As they left the kitchen by the split door, she wondered if it was a vegetable peculiar to Ireland, or, perhaps, the tool used to dig one up. As Mary led her leisurely to the kitchen garden, stopping now and then to put her hands on her hips or to nod at the trees or acknowledge a sparrow, Chloë translated dander as a stroll and deduced that a skite must be one too. The champ turned out to be the mashed potato they were to have for dinner; the preys, blushing pinky-orange beneath their earthy vests, were of course the raw ingredients. That merely left ‘witmee'. Chloë wondered if it described the sort of stroll – perhaps a short one for culinary end? She felt, however, a little bashful to ask and it was two days before she learnt the meaning.

‘Have a bistik witmee!' Mary had said, offering a tin laid neatly with flapjacks.

‘Mmm!' Chloë said as she munched, thinking ‘Aha! biscuit!' to herself. ‘
With me
!' she said triumphantly, through a muffle of crumbs.

‘Hey?' said Mary. ‘Getalang-widger!'

Chloë knew instinctively what a long widger was.

‘I'll get along with me!' she said gratefully.

Far from being rosy and fun, life at Ballygorm Manor is hard work. But the most demanding task for Chloë so far has been to fathom why Jocelyn has sent her here. And why to Gus.

‘A very special place and I hold it dear in my heart.'

Some mistake, surely. Not here. Not him.

‘You'll be wanting to earn your keep, Miss Cadwallader?' said Gus on the first night over the fruit compote and a glass of port. ‘Yes?'

‘Yes, oh yes,' stammered Chloë, hoping that effusive enthusiasm and obedience might endear her to him a little more and thereby entice the ‘real' Gus to step forward. The one that Jocelyn assured Chloë ‘will not disappoint'. ‘But of course!' she enthused. ‘Indeed! Just tell me how!'

Gus had not answered, merely nodded whilst spearing a hunk of stilton.

When Chloë had bidden him a very good-night and had praised the champ to the hilt, he had not taken his eyes from his brandy; merely held it to the light, twirled it expertly and then said, ‘Nine o'clock, then. In the study. Breakfasted, if you please.' With that, Gus closed the conversation and closed the door on the early evening. Chloë went to bed forlornly without even a glance at the Andrews who seemed very much at home at Ballygorm. Much more so than Chloë.

The next morning, Gus's demeanour had changed completely. After some analysing, Chloë attributed this not to the kippers which Gus obviously loved but whose oily, pungent, bony bodies had quite unnerved her, nor to the strong black coffee, nor even to the very fine morning; but wholly to the study. She soon discovered that the grounds at Ballygorm had the same effect on Gus; not nature itself, not the landscape in general, not just being out of doors, but specifically the land lying within the estate boundary.

‘Sculpture, Chloë, sculpture!'

Chloë widened her eyes and parted her lips and nodded faintly.

‘Well, look at this place!' he exclaimed, moving his arms expansively. Chloë slung a careful look around the study, noting an oak table strewn with papers and shelves of books whose titles her glance did not register. She saw that Gus was gazing intently out of the window. On a sweep of grass curved off by trees, a fat wood-pigeon plumped his breast leisurely while a squabble of crows made merry in the neighbouring branches.

‘It's – oh! Truly magnificent!' said Chloë helpfully. ‘And I do like sculpture!'

‘The point,' said Gus sternly, tapping the window-pane only to be stared at vacantly by the pigeon, ‘is that Ballygorm is an easy half-hour from Belfast.'

‘Ah,' said Chloë, trying not to add a question mark. Gus gave the window-pane a hard rap but whether this was an expression of his irritation with her or the pigeon, she was unsure.

‘Thirty minutes from the capital city of a country for the time being no longer Troubled, as it were. Come!'

Chloë followed him out of the study, across the hallway and out through the vast double doors on to the gravel drive. There was silence save for the pleasant crunch of the stones underfoot and the cawing of the crows. April was apparently not a cruel month in the Irish calendar, but a most affable one. Though dew still swept over the grass, the air was dry and fresh and the sun shone gently, taking the edge off the constant breeze.

Gus led her to where the gravel met the grass. Carefully, she positioned her feet just like him, an inch or so away from the start of the lawn. She heard him fill his nostrils and exhale gladly. She closed her eyes momentarily and wondered whether to comment on the gifts of the morning.

‘The Ballygorm Sculpture Trail!' Gus announced quietly, but with aplomb. They stood in silence; slowly Chloë began to superimpose sculptures on to the land before her. The genius of Gus's project was at once evident for, against the backdrop of Ballygorm, works of art would be assured a remarkable habitat.

‘You see,' said Gus, ‘you take away the hessian-clad confines of a gallery wall and suddenly the classical can coexist quite happily with the abstract.'

Chloë followed his drift and his gaze, and placed against the landscape imaginary pieces of solid marble and others of filigree metal; figurative bronzes and abstract constructions in timber.

‘Fantastic!' she said genuinely.

‘A money spinner,' qualified Gus, ‘by appointment only. Schoolchildren permitted only when I am
not
here.'

He clapped his hands before his sentence was finished, which startled Chloë and extricated the pigeon from the long grass. The crows were shocked into silence for Gus's clap sounded remarkably like his air rifle.

‘Right then! To work!'

Chloë soon found herself working a full day under Gus. Her typing speed has doubled out of necessity because the workload is heavy and her boss is easily displeased. Apart from the occasional rushed morning in Ballymena and an afternoon on the beach at Ballygally, where she gazed wistfully over to the Mull of Kintyre slumbering in mauve across the water, Chloë has rarely left the estate. She does not protest, for the work is stimulating and Gus's praise is something she craves. However, a tiny voice deep inside sometimes asks whether Jocelyn knew of this, whether it is as she intended. It goes unanswered because Jocelyn herself has been pointedly left out of their discussions. Very early on, Chloë tried to draw Jocelyn into the conversation. Over the
crème brûlée
, she remembered fondly how this was her godmother's favourite dessert – did you know that? do you remember? She had no idea whether Gus knew or remembered for he laid his spoon carefully beside the dish, fixed her with a stare which said ‘Don't!' and ate no more.