Saints and Sinners (6 page)

Eureka. I know what it is ...you are expelling, if that is the word, the karma of the previous incumbent and a good thing too ... I must say I would love a glass of water or a glass of angostura bitters ... such a thirst— parched. I see you collect stones, large stones, small stones, rocks, and that fearsome boulder ... I expect each has a significance for you, a hidden power. Those ponies, pretty and dappled, but wild ... wild and quite unpredictable. It must be common ground ... I noticed people — strays, youths, louts—and one or two caravans, much drabber than yours. To tell you the truth I am quite breathless .. .I have been over yonder for the last hour ... I saw that you were occupied ... I saw your sign—Do Not Disturb. Made myself scarce. The previous client ... I happen to know her. We are, neighbors. Her people's land abuts onto our avenue which of course is more exclusive what with our belt of trees, yews, and cypresses that have matured down the years. Good lady, I imagine that you are resting ... it stands to reason ... you are drained. When a young girl, may I say a buxom young convent girl such as your last client, comes for advice it is usually pertaining to matters of the heart
Comprende.
I hope you don't mind my sitting here and gabbling away ... it lessens the fret. I shall try to admire the surroundings ... though to be honest I would rather I were not observed. Matters of the heart must be strictly confidential.
Comprende.
I am Mildred ... wife of Gerhardt, Mr. Gentleman ... my maiden name was Butler ... we are descended from the House of the Ormonds ... our flower gardens and our fruit gardens were renowned — open on certain summer Sundays to the public whence teas were served in a little summerhouse. As a matter of fact Mr. Gentleman wooed me in the kitchen garden, in and out between the raspberry canes and the loganberry canes and the tall delphiniums. Many girls, it seems, had set their caps on him, this young and eligible barrister, set their caps on him to no avail. My yearning was for the stage ... how I loved the magic, the make-believe. Even at the age of six or seven when my mother took me to the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin for the pantomime and we sat in a box, I drank it all in—the orchestra, the miming, the intrigues, the dames, the villains, the skits and the ever-happy ending. My father would wait for us at his club in Stephen's Green, and we would have dinner in a very salubrious dining room. I played Desdemona in my boarding school ... Othello, well she/he was somewhat uncouth .. .ah yes, one who loved not wisely but too well. So when I met Gerhardt I was full of Desdemona but not for long. You see my heart went on a ninety-mile ... what is it called ... revolve. I lost my head. I waited for the ring of our garden bell. Oh what a chirpy sound from that big fat copper bell ...Mr. G. coming on any excuse, the flimsiest of excuses, in a suit, or in old dungarees and always when least expected ... how the heart registers these thunderbolts. I was much younger and younger still for my actual years ... yes, in and out between the raspberry canes, and the loganberry canes, and would you believe it our dog Hector got so jealous he would bark and chase Mr. Gentleman, in venom, and one day he took a great scoop out of the side of Mr. Gentleman's hand, kept his teeth there, and what did Gerhardt do ... he did a strange thing, a rather cruel thing—he kicked Hector, beat him into submission, and Hector became his friend ... Mr. Gentleman could handle beast or man or woman or girl In time he was welcomed indoors ... a sherry and so forth ... his pursuit of me was both adamant and subtle, which was why they thought him ideal. He always brought gifts — chocolate or cherry brandy truffles — he was one-eighth foreign, Normandy stock, which added to his mystique. He proposed in a country churchyard and it was dusk and there was not a soul about .. .just like the elegy— "the lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea"—and he made a ring of grasses ...a magic ring, engagement and eternity so to speak. A couple of nights before our wedding he was in the library with my father ... they had become bosom friends or should I say bosom buddies—they played backgammon, they reminisced, they drank port or Armagnac—in those days I did not drink ... slept like a baby ... whereas now the evening tipple is mandatory. I overheard them speak of women—how much they loved women, idealized women—dilated on their necks, their sloping shoulders, their hindquarters, their ankles ... all very detached ... almost clinical ... my father did not mention my mother, Alannah, not once. Stressing how certain pieces of music reminded them of their trysts with certain women, either because the music was being played on a gramophone in some lady's drawing room or perhaps, some more ... obtuse reason, my dear mother ... so beholden. I could always tell when they had been intimate because next morning my father would be most imperious, quite snappy, munching his toast ... crumpling his newspaper, and my mother a trifle foolish and obliging. Yes I stood in the doorway half expecting my husband-to-be or my father to say "Ah Millie come in" but they didn't, either because they were so engrossed and did not see me or else they thought my presence was inappropriate. Madame I know you are resting ... each seance, each session, call it what you will, must take a lot out of you, reaching into the soul ofthe person and draining out the inmost secret, the kernel.

Perhaps you are praying— "And death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be anymore." I regard myself lucky to have found you, to have tracked you down ... now where was I ... oh yes, oh yes our wedding ... it was beautiful ... it was written up in more than one daily newspaper ... the smell from the lily of the valley drenched the little country church in County Waterford ... our own lily of the valley at that—tiaras of it for the bridesmaids and bunches for the little maidens of honor—it was intoxicating ... a choir ... hymns ... me poured into my ivory slipper-satin. My husband could not take his eyes off me that June morning ...I should like for a moment to say something about my husband's eyes ... they are in the normal course of things, as he broods over his papers and his briefs, they are not unlike an oyster, which is to say that they are gray with a milkiness .. .but when, as for instance our wedding morning, when the dart of cupid has struck, they are opal, the merest hue of silver, limned with blue ... I saw them then and many other times and ... and I see them now and they are not on me and they are not for me and it is awful ... and it is awful. Our honeymoon was ... well it was sailing into the sunset ... pure bliss ... unadulterated bliss ... there is no other word quite so appropriate ... or so nuanced, devoid of affection and small talk. But which does one want more, bliss or affection, and moreover I had brought a stack ofbooks ... the Aegean Sea a palette of blues ... and all those guidebooks with tales of the ancients, the gods and the goddesses ... what spitfires they were ... with their intriguings ... always plotting to get the upper hand of one another ... if Hera liked you, Athena didn't, and Juno marrying her own brother Jupiter, who wooed her in the guise of a cuckoo ... not to mention old Poseidon ... who could stir up a storm in a flash ... yes ... essential to keep on the good side of Zeus, and as for poor Dido it was not a willow in her hand with which she bade her love to come again to Carthage, it was a sword on which she impaled herself ... poor poor Dido. It was there that I read how the Egyptians were the first to master the art of clairvoyance ... they could by knowing the date of a person's birth, tell the character, the life's eventualities, and the day of death — but it was not called astrology, not until Roman times was it connected to the stars ... but good lady you know all about that—those gods and goddesses had their seers ... people just like you ... they in their shrines and you in your painted caravan and I cannot tell you what a relief it is to be here ... to be able to let off a little steam. Yes, it was bliss ... the ever-changing light of the sea and no dusk ... just daylight and then darkness ... amorous dark, and when we came home it went on being bliss but life does stretch on, does it not, like a great yarn ... and married people have to get to know one another's peculiarities ... one another's habits ... moods. Gerhardt was in the city in his chambers all week and then Fridays he drove home and the welcome, or should I say the host of welcomes, the two dogs, my wolfhound and his red setter, our little daft helper Aoife, and myself all rushing onto the drive, waving—Odysseus did not have such a welcome at Ithaca, far from it. A delicious dinner, roast with potato gratin, and apple fritters or charlotte russe for afters. Later, in the gloaming, we sat in the conservatory and discussed our week ... the little highlights and the little lowlights, and he smoked a cigar and I would have a taste, yes a taste, more than a puff, and Mr. Gentleman ... well he knew so much ... so much more than me and amazing how versatile even a cigar can be. Grand Marnier souffle Sundays before he took off for the city ... not a grass widow but a barrister's widow. For our holidays we never went abroad ... we sailed ... we loved sailing and with a windfall from a great aunt we bought a small houseboat and named it after her— Violet Rose. We would set out from Athlone and come all the way down along the Shannon, so beautiful, the breezes, the reeds, the quiet ... endless preparations beforehand ... rubber cushions, rugs ... the primus stove ... methylated spirits . ..a first aid kit ... straw hats and rain hats ... cream for the creepy crawlies ... s carcely speaking ...just ambling along, and the smile, the smiles ... what a lovely thing a smile is ... it speaks multitudes. I lost two children very early on ... he too was cut up—"O there above the little grave we kissed again with tears." Good lady, I confess, I am most afraid. Quite by chance I came on it, a white shoe box, tucked into the folds of a wide cedar that borders their fence and ours ... slippers ... Cinderella slippers with rosebuds, concealed in tissue paper ... they were not my size ... I have rather large feet ... the following morning they were gone ... s omeone had removed them. On that rare occasion, I did tackle him, but he would not engage ... said he wanted to hear no more outlandish stories or delusions. It was in the bedroom, in the very early morning ... I feared for my life. There are some moments, or perhaps they are mere seconds, that stay in the deep freeze of the mind forever. I might have dreamt it ... I convinced myself for a time that I did dream it ... I said Millie, put it behind you ... you have been sleepwalking ... you walked down the avenue in your sleep. I got to be an ace fisherwornan on our Shannon cruises ... G. couldn't believe it ... he said it was something to do with not just the lightness but the swivel of my wrist. I was a tad unpopular with all the other fishing folk ...a witch they called me. Of course at first I did not know how to play a fish, I rushed it and lost several ... but Gerhardt schooled me and before long I excelled, I surpassed him. In the month of May, in the dapping season, we stayed out all day ... all those millions of mayflies ... the air scudded with them Gerhardt said their courtship and their demise happened in the course of a single day ... poor mayflies ... nature's trick ... poor mayflies ... poor Dido. "O never give the heart outright"—who said that? I have read that men have cycles just like us women ... we have cycles because of the presence of the uterus—hence we are subject from time to time to hysteria—whereas men's cycles do not answer to the womb or the moon but to their own dastardly whims ... they simply go on and off the creatures they call women. Of course anyone could have left the shoe box ... any yokel or passerby. Of late he stays out in the greenhouse till all hours .. .just like my father and his dog—my dog, I should say, Hector the fourth — yes Gerhardt stays there tending his vines, his cucumbers and his marrows, which cross-pollinate ... don't ask me how ... he just places them side by side next to each other and somehow they cohabit ... they breed ... the saffron pollen wends its way to the opposite sex and ... they propagate.

He rarely falls in love ... three times to my once and a half. A scandal occurred in his chambers in the Four Courts ... one morning a junior happened to come in with a mound of papers and the secretary, a Miss O'Hanlaoin, was where she should not be and engaged in some hanky-panky ... fortunately it was hushed up ... he did not feature half-naked in a tabloid with his braces down, and moreover the junior was quite discreet, quite sterling. The overweening secretary not so. I found her notes in his pockets — demanding a showdown with me. Ooh la la la. It taught him a lesson. "I will never leave you Millie ... I will never leave you" was what he said. We went on a cruise for a reconciliation ... some of the wives had at least twelve changes of attire ... and the jewelry, so ostentatious, so unnecessary ...we sat at the captain's table. I did get tiddly once or twice ... the high heels and the ship's swaying did not help matters. When we docked for two days in a strange port, my husband played with children on the beach ...a ball game—he and they tossed and kicked an orange ball ... strangers' children ... dusk-colored children ... certainly not white children, and they loved him. You see he has this aura—it emanates from him—by which people fall in love with him. They were seen—the buxom girl, the hussy, who has just left your caravan — they were seen one evening of late out on the lake and were caught in a squall ... had to take shelter ... something I learnt as one does through the offices of a best friend. It was when Dido and Aeneas took shelter that the fateful arrow of love struck. I do have one card up my sleeve, the most powerful card in the pack. One of our national poets, one of the triptych of Greats, has said that a young wife's, or for that matter, a young convent girl's trump card is the young cunt .. .but an older wife has a more powerful card ... a darker card ... one that we must not speak of. Are you with me, good lady? ...
Comprende?
I see you also do the tarot cards as well as the crystal ... I am familiar with some ... the Hanged Man ... La Tour ... Temperance ... the Scales of Justice. That hussy has no right to our gooseberries ... none whatsoever ... our apples ... our crab apples ... our pippins ... our pears ... our marrows ... our redcur-rants ... our blackcurrants ... our loganberries ... our quinces ... our greengages ... our sugar plums ... our meddlers ... our strawberries ... our hops ... ourvines ... our root vegetables ... our harvests. Please, please. Open your door to me. I won't ask too much. I realize that it is a matter of some delicacy, of some discretion on your part ... the Hippocratic oath or something akin to the priest in the confessional ...you are bound to secrecy ... all I ask is this. Being as you are a seer, what did you see? Have they gone in deep? By that I mean ... you know what I mean. He's not old enough to be her father. .. he's old enough to be her grandfather. . .it is preposterous . ..i t is absurd . ..i t is, unthinkable . ..S think of Dido ... I think of confit of duck in the fridge, since Sunday ... I think of my husband's opal eyes and the card he wrote me last Christmas ... "twenty-two years and still my Queen" ... I think I think I think. Good lady, open up ... open your door ... open your curtain ... open it now ... I cannot wait a second longer . ..do you understand ... these louts are looking at me ... they're laughing at me ... the wild ponies are galloping ... raising the dry dust in swarms. You are there. I know. I know it. I feel your presence in the nonrustle of the thick, dark-red lined curtain.