The Butterfly Cabinet (10 page)

I sat in silence and looked out from beneath the protection of my veil; the fine gauze made me feel a bit light-headed, like an invisible observer, as if I were present and absent at the same time. Outside the snow descended in short flurries. The press were lined up like vultures in the gallery; I saw that nasty little man from the
Watchman
whom Edward had admitted to the house the day after the funeral. Edward had thought it would help my case. Since neither he nor I was legally permitted to be examined in court, he thought it would go in my favor if he were to give the public our version of events. It did not help: the reporter did not libel Edward, of course—he was too clever for that—but he printed Edward’s words entirely divorced from the sentiment with which they had been expressed. We are of the opinion, said Edward, that if a child’s will is well broken in childhood, it will acquire habits of obedience that will serve it well in later life. “Mrs. Ormond was always watchful to combat anything like willfulness …,” the paper printed. “It is the tendencies that show themselves very early in some children that must be repressed … I do not consider this mode of punishment a hardship, as it is done for restraint.” From infants we left them to cry: a child must learn self-control and the sooner it learns it, the happier it will be. Discipline goes in and out of fashion like waistlines and hats. Who is to say that in a hundred years’ time parents will not be castigated for raising their voices to their children?

Edward did not tell and the reporter did not print the story of his grief. How he had lifted Charlotte’s cold hand and held it to his cheek; how he had brushed the curls back from her forehead; how he had carried her up the stairs to Harry’s vacant room and put her down on the bed and lit the lamp and sat at her feet the
whole night, looking out into the dark. After some discussion, the magistrate admitted bail, and I was permitted to return home until the adjournment the following Thursday.

The public had not been admitted, the reasons for which were clear as soon as we stepped outside. A crowd of shawled women had gathered, wicker baskets at their feet, and a number of boys in cloth caps. When I emerged, they began to jeer and spit. Ashes and fish bones flew through the air; a rotten potato struck Edward on the side of the face. A far cry from our welcome less than twelve years ago when Edward and I arrived at the station at Oranmore. Much has changed since then, and it is not to do with Charlotte, at least not all of it. In the bitter breaths that hung misted in the February air, I smelled hatred: every drop of it reeked of rebellion.

In his letter, Edward tells me that the papers are full of letters of complaint at the leniency of my sentence: “twelve calendar months’ imprisonment with labor suitable” for me, an overlong confinement, the equivalent of a pregnancy and a lying-in. “There is still one law for the rich and another for the poor,” they say. God help us, there is even poetry, if you can call it that, with titles such as “Mothers of Britain” and “Babes in Arms.” They will never forgive me because to the best of their knowledge I have remained dry-eyed throughout the whole business, and a female who keeps her emotions in check is, in their view, not to be trusted. I am not a popular cause, at least not among the sane, although I do have my supporters. According to the papers, there are hordes of ladies who have written to the home secretary in my defense, offered to take my place, even, to shoulder my punishment for me. They are the same people, however, who would free Mrs. Maybrick (whom they say did not poison her husband) and the perjurist Mrs. Osborne, who is also with child. With friends such as these…

In the early reports, before the trial, I was described as “handsome,” but by the time the later columns were printed I had developed a remarkably determined cast of features: keen,
cold eyes; a firm mouth; a powerful jaw; thin, tightly compressed lips. Whereas in my youth, I read, I had been “a young lady of considerable personal attractions,” my countenance now betrays an unbending resolution, a calm and unmoved demeanor. I dare say, had I behaved in a suitably hysterical fashion, I would have occasioned more public sympathy, but sympathy is, in any case, not a particularly useful commodity in the circumstances in which I now find myself. I know how implausible I must appear. My behavior is not what would have been expected, but I am not inclined to deliver a performance in order to fulfill the expectations of newspaper editors. There would be no end to the deceit to which that would lead. They would not call it lenient if they saw me, I think, lying on my back at night, waiting for the dark to grow fingers.

I did not expect to sleep the first night she was dead. And then, when I did, I did not expect to wake. And yet, those two things continue to happen, in sequence, one after the other, and every time I am surprised. It is enormously difficult, I understand, to break the body’s habit.

Did I kill her? I cannot think of what she endured; there would be no way back from there. I am responsible, without question. There is no escape from that day.

21 OCTOBER 1968

You’ll hardly go back to the teaching, Anna? Not for a long while, anyway. The baby will need you at home. Don’t tell me now, I know the name of your subject. Biology, isn’t that it? Plants and animals and all that kind of thing. Oh, it’s lovely to have you both back again. And Conor teaching at the university, who would have thought it? There was a picture of the building in the paper; one million pounds it’s costing. Not that I’m likely to see it finished. Look, Anna, look at my hand. The little bird is growing, its tail is all the way up my arm. Oh, don’t look like that, I’m not sad about going; there’s people I’m hoping to see. I have a bit of explaining to do, to them and to you. The truth is the hardest thing to tell. I know that look in your eye: “Get on with the story, Nanny”—that’s what you’re thinking. Oh, you needn’t deny it, I’ve known you too long.

May morning, not long after I started at the castle, the mistress was in a fury because the fires were late being lit. Peig refused to light them till she saw the smoke go up from a neighbor’s chimney. She was awful superstitious, Peig: she said the charm setters would steal the smoke from the first house that lit a fire on May morning, and spoil the butter and the milk.

The weans wanted a May bush and Paudie cut down a whitethorn from the far meadow. They’d kept all their dyed eggshells from Easter and some old ribbons Miss Julia had given them, and they put the day in out the back of the laundry decorating the bush, and the evening dancing round it like little heathens, flailing about with nettles to frighten the fairies. They begged Paudie to play the fiddle for them and Madge tied a ribbon round Charlotte’s head and stuck it through with marigolds and buttercups. She looked for all the world like a fairy princess, like the pixies had left her behind. They were put to bed, exhausted, but it wasn’t long till there were tears. I was going past on the landing outside the nursery when I heard Charlotte weeping. I knew the mistress was at dinner so I went in and found Charlotte, dripping wet, Morris standing in his nightshirt with the chamber pot in his hand, the look on his face changing when he saw me come into the room.

“Madge said we were to keep a lookout for fairies changing homes,” he said, “and not let them steal one of us and leave a changeling in our place.”

I grabbed a towel and wiped Charlotte down, the poor child crying sore, Gabriel giggling under the covers.

“Don’t touch her, Maddie, she’s a changeling!” Morris said. “Madge said we’d know by a mark. Look at her!”

“Look, Maddie,” Charlotte said, and pointed to a place above her eye where the skin was reddened, risen up in white lumps where she’d been hit by a nettle. She looked at me, her eyes full of tears. “Is it true, Maddie? Have they stolen me? Am I not Charlotte?”

I scolded them sore for torturing her; I was raging with Madge for filling their heads full of tales. And I washed and dressed Charlotte but for a long time she couldn’t be settled. In the end I got her a knob of butter and rubbed it into her head and told her the fairies couldn’t take her now ’cause they had no power
over the first butter made from the milk on May Day. And she was quiet for a while after that. But as I was leaving the room, Morris called me back.

“Maddie, will you tell Mother?” he asked. I said no, I wouldn’t. I didn’t add that I’d be in as much trouble as he would if the mistress found out I’d been in with them. But he gave me the oddest look, like he was disappointed. I could never work that child out.

After I went up to bed, I heard a footstep on the landing outside, and the door of my room creaked open, and there was Charlotte.

“Can I come in to you, Maddie?” she said. “The butter’s rubbed off and I’m scared the bad fairies will come for me.”

What could I do? I turned down my quilt and said, “Five minutes only,” and in she bounced and fell fast asleep. I carried her back down the spiral stairs, past the lamp on the landing that cast our humped shadow on the nursery door, with my heart in my mouth for fear I’d meet the mistress. But she never caught us. All the times Charlotte crept in beside me she never knew a thing about it. And Charlotte never told. Young as she was, she knew how to keep a secret; she knew we’d both be in bother if her mother found out. You know, you look like her, Anna. Not the mouth—you get that from your father’s side—but those same serious eyes, weighing things up, taking everything in.

Charlotte was everybody’s favorite among the servants, maybe because we all saw what her mother and father failed to see: how tortured and aggravated she was. Her aunt Julia gave her a present of a dolls’ house for her third birthday. It was a fine-looking thing with window frames and sills and a fanlight over the door. We were all taken with it. Peig knitted her a ceiling rose in white wool, exactly like the one in the drawing room. I crocheted a little rug for a bedroom and Peter, grumpy old Peter that would hardly more than give you the time of day, came in one afternoon
with a tiny kitchen table and dresser he’d built for her out of scraps of wood. Him and his big old hands. She was so loved by us. When any of us had a spare minute, we’d be busy making something for the house, sewing covers for the beds, little curtains for the windows. In no time at all, the whole house was furnished from top to bottom. She loved playing with it. You could see her get lost in her own wee world, walking imaginary youngsters up and down stairs, tucking them in, washing their faces. One time she was playing, I had to call her down for her riding lesson, and you could see the wrench it was for her, the change that came in her eyes, how loath she was to leave her fairy world for the one outside.

There was something about it that the mistress couldn’t bide, that play world of Charlotte’s. She couldn’t see what the wean saw. Charlotte picked up a handful of gravel and made an avenue for her dolls’ house on the nursery floor. There was a moat and a drawbridge and a tiny maze, but all the mistress saw was a pile of mud and dirt. It was the thing that was sure to throw her into a rage, but it was all frustration, I think. Like she was locked out of something she didn’t understand.

The thing that really riled the mistress was when one of the weans wet or dirtied themselves. You’d think they did it deliberately, the way she reacted. She’d beat the living daylights out of them, and it was into the wardrobe room with them, dirty clothes and all, where there was less ventilation than in a prison cell. That was the worst thing, I think. You can understand it when youngsters are punished for cheek or for lying, but a thing like that can’t really be helped and putting them in the wardrobe room wasn’t the way to cure it. It’d make you even more nervous, something like that.

Miss Julia and the mistress had a blazing row about it. They didn’t even bother to keep their voices down: they stood in the nursery with the door wide open and yelled at each other for
everyone to hear. It was after Miss Julia came to stay. Charlotte was only about two at the time and the mistress was trying to get her to use the chamber pot but she couldn’t get the hang of it at all and she’d dirtied her underdrawers. The mistress was letting rip, shouting at her, and Julia came in and said it wasn’t the wean’s fault. Then the mistress told her to mind her own business and that she would rear her children the way she saw fit. Miss Julia said if she thought that was the way to rear them, shouting and roaring at them for making one little mistake, then God help them, and the mistress said that when Miss Julia had a child of her own she might be allowed to have an opinion on the matter but until then she could just keep her nose right out of it. Miss Julia said she was allowed to have an opinion about the way her own niece was treated, and the mistress said she could go write her opinions on a placard and parade up and down the street and see if that would get her anywhere, but that
she
wouldn’t be taking any notice of her. Then Miss Julia said it wasn’t right and the mistress said if she didn’t like the way she ran her household she could go find herself some other house that would take her in rent-free, but that while she was there she could keep her mouth shut. And Miss Julia walked out and slammed the door, and that was that.

Miss Julia and the mistress were nothing alike; it was hard to believe they were sisters at all. Miss Julia had a way with the children: they would do anything for her. She spent hours with them painting and drawing, making up stories. I think it annoyed the mistress that her sister had so much patience. You’d have thought the way she went on that Miss Julia was doing it to annoy her. If the mistress put one of the children in the wardrobe room, Miss Julia crept up and spoke to them through the door. A couple of times, she must have got her hands on the key, slipped in with a glass of milk and a slice of bread. She found ways around the mistress’s harshness, but after that row she did it carefully, without letting anyone know.

•   •   •

Hand me my stick, Anna, will you? Oh, my bones! I stand up and the whole house creaks. It’s not easy getting your bearings. My bedroom now is on the third floor, not far, I think, from where my old room used to be. And we have a small sitting room of our own up there, with a TV in it, but I’m not sure what that room would have been. I think it must have been part of the governess’s old room. There used to be two spiral staircases in the house, in two of the old turrets: one that went straight from outside the door of the governess’s room beside mine down into the nursery on the floor below, and from there on down to the schoolroom on the ground floor. There was one on the north side, too, outside Madge’s room, that led down into the hall outside Miss Julia’s room and then on down again to the dining room. We weren’t supposed to use them—we were meant to use the passage stairs—but they were handy, and many’s the time I took the chance of getting caught to save my legs the longer walk. They’re not there anymore: they put in lift shafts for us that can’t make it up and down the main stairs.