The Pig Comes to Dinner (17 page)

Without Kitty noticing, Peter had stopped and the dog with him, five paces ahead. It was only when he called out to her that she became aware of her solitude. “I'm taking Joey back. He's got chores.”

Kitty turned around completely to face the boy. He crinkled his nose, sending a few of the freckles onto his cheeks until they almost touched his eyes. The dog sat, tongue out, still looking at him, awaiting a command. “My mother says come have tea any time. She likes it you live in the castle. She says she's glad it's you and not us.”

Calmer now, Kitty had one more question. “Before, you said there's a difference between what your mother thinks and what she knows. Then the dog came and you didn't get back to it. Can you tell me again which is which? I'm a bit confused and I—”

“I don't know,” Peter interrupted.

“But you said it just a few minutes ago.”

“Maybe. I don't know. I don't remember saying that.”

“But you very distinctly said—”

“I don't remember that either. I say things and then I don't remember.”

“You said your mother said—”

“I keep forgetting what my mother said. But don't tell her.”

“You remember nothing that you—”

“I've got to get home. And Joey, too. Or we'll both get beat.”

Kitty considered asking him to pick his nose again, but decided instead to let him go. He had earned his surcease. She went up to him and looked into his eyes. They were a soft brown and the whites as white as porcelain. He seemed puzzled by her being there, next to him. She was reminded a bit of Taddy. “You're a good boy,” she said. “And I thank you.” She reached out and touched his cheek. At that, the dog, responding to an ungiven command, sank his teeth into her left thigh. “Ahhh!” she screamed, swatting her hand at the little beast. The dog wagged its tail and, Kitty was sure, smiled at its handiwork.

“Oh,” said the boy. “Sorry about that. But don't worry. He's harmless.”

“Harmless! He just bit me!”

“I know. I'm skinny at school so he does that when anybody touches me.”

“You could have warned me.”

“I didn't think he'd do it, not to you.”

“Oh?”

“You live in the castle. I didn't think anybody lived in a castle ever got bit.”

“Well, now you know.”

“Huh. Strange, isn't it?”

Kitty did not respond. This was one more confusion she could do without. The boy turned and started again down the road, pausing only to scratch his left calf. The dog watched, then trotted alongside, looking up, tongue out, smiling, eager. Kitty watched until a bend in the road took the boy and the dog from view, leaving the way empty.

Coming to the rock wall where the boy had dispensed his peculiarities, Kitty was tempted to stop, to gaze out again at the wide world spread there before her, land, sea, sky, rock, sheep, gorse, but she, like the boy, like the dog, had chores to do. And she must do them. Whatever they might prove to be.

9

I
f Lord Shaftoe had left the castle in a downpour, it was in a torrent that he returned. The sea was enraged and had persuaded the sky to join in its frenzy. The seething waves broke over the land, sending walls of water down upon the defenseless countryside; the clouds, rent by lightning and clamoring with thunder, had opened wide and emptied their full allowance of rain without discipline on the hills and steeples, the cottages, and, perforce, the castles. The water seemed to be responding to more than a gravitational pull; more than merely falling, it was hurling itself, as if shot from the exploding clouds that were doing battle among themselves for domination of the sky.

As ruthlessly as all of nature had turned upon itself, it was nothing to the devastation recently slammed down upon Kitty's unready head. To her aghast amazement, the courts had ruled in favor of George Noel Gordon Lord Shaftoe— and against Caitlin McCloud and Kieran Sweeney. Proofs had been presented that the Shaftoes, from far Australia, had indeed paid their taxes faithfully and promptly, which meant that the title to Castle Kissane had never passed to the Crown, much less to the Republic, and least of all to Caitlin McCloud, despite her generous outlay in cash. Against this Shaftoe triumph, she had no appeal. Her clamorings could go forth to the gate of heaven itself, but they would achieve no more than desperate prayers sent in the same direction all those years ago when the county was being ravaged and the innocent strung up from the nearest height.

Having troubled deaf heaven with her bootless cries, she'd had to listen to her less impressionable husband when he pointed out that he lacked the means and the know-how to blow up the castle, as she'd threatened to do. Besides, since the castle was no longer hers to destroy, all the time she would spend in prison for its destruction might provide an uninterrupted opportunity to finish her correction of
The Mill
on the Floss
and, possibly, depending on the judge, time to get busy with yet another correction or two.

That she would simply go mad was considered yet one more possibility. Kitty in her near derangement felt she was left with no recourse from this outrage but to do what any self-respecting free citizen of the Republic would do in the face of eviction: throw a great and festive feast, and everyone invited. As for Brid and Taddy, she would concern herself with their fate another day. Her mind could accommodate only so much, and it was already crowded with enough competing claims to suggest madness as a means of saving that very same mind.

But once the feast had been decided upon, she was given a purpose in life that not only mocked her reversals of fortune but also distracted her from all and any actions that might land her in jail or in the madhouse.

For the moment, she had to deal only with the raging tempest, whose obvious goal was the total obliteration of the civilized world, a not uncommon happening in these parts. With Kieran gone off to Caherciveen in search of shallots for the dinner he'd planned for that evening, Kitty had to make her way up the side of Crohan Mountain to the commonage at its summit and, with language foul and unseemly, with threats and with soothings, bring the near drowned cows safely not only down the pasture slope but into the great hall of the castle itself.

Brid had accompanied her, but other than an encouragement communicated by her very presence, she was not of much practical use. Wandering among the confused and frightened beasts, she did, however, seem to bring some degree of calm to counter Kitty's slaps and shoves.

Before Kitty could secure the massive doors of the great hall after the entry of the last drenched cow, in came the pig, its squeals and screams at the indignities of lightning, thunder, water, and wind more than a formidable competitor to the storm's howling. Again Kitty made an attempt to best the wind and close the doors against the elements' wrath, but this time there entered not just the pig but Lord Shaftoe himself, conjured by the tempest as yet one more scourge sent to blight the earth and all the people on it.

Unlike that other apparition in the great hall—Brid, who had been exempt from water and wind and had made her way up and down the mountain and into the castle as dry and as composed as was possible, given her uncertain status among the living—his lordship, not having learned from his previous visit that an umbrella was a useful implement when touring the county, was more ghostly than Brid or Taddy had ever been. From the depths of the sea had he risen, shrouded in a mist of his own secretion, bedraggled, and bringing with him into the confines made sweet by the presence of the cows, the stench of wet wool steaming from his clothes, his tweed, his soaked trousers, his snap-visored cap, and the buttoned cardigan meant to keep out the damp.

So weighted was he with water that he seemed unable to move—stunned, perhaps, to discover that he, like everyone else caught in the path of the demented storm, was subject to inconveniences and discomforts. Surely this was contrary to what had been divinely ordained, that his person, to say nothing of his clothing, was exempt from any effects not within his preference. Immobilized by the affront, he stood there, the growing puddle at his feet threatening even further the survival of his soft leather shoes.

The cows stretched their necks upward, mooing. At the arrival of his lordship, Brid promptly dissolved, taking with her the only calm and resigned presence in the hall. The cows moved restlessly among themselves, brushing against each other's flanks, flicking each other's eyes with their tails, as their hooves scraped and clattered on the flagstone paving. The pig, for its part, had silenced itself and was scraping its brass ring at his lordship's feet, the usual snorting sounds taken up into the tempest's howl.

His lordship was the first to raise his voice above the din. “It was hardly my intention to intrude in this fashion, but it seems to be raining and my vehicle doesn't accommodate flooding with the ease one might expect. I've had to abandon it at the bottom of the road with my architect inside. Is it your experience that it—and he—are in danger of being washed away? My architect persuaded me to come and inquire. I'd intended to show him only the exterior of the castle, to give him some idea of what he'll be taking on when the improvements are decided upon, but do you think you might send one of your menials down to rescue him? Then he could, if you don't mind—and I'm sure you don't—see the interior as well, killing, as it were, two birds with one stone. We promise to be as unintrusive as possible. Except that maybe you could prevail upon one of your staff to provide us with a bit of tea. And a biscuit or two would be quite welcome as well.”

With this, Kitty was put at war with herself. The man should be heaved back into the maelstrom whence he'd come, taking the stench of his expensive wools with him and relieving her of the temptation to first chastise him with the valor of her tongue, then treat him to a full dose of her sarcasm—which, she could tell from the still faint impulses given off deep in her stomach, would, by the time they had gained her lips, have gathered enough venom to make even the most impervious among us susceptible to the self-loathing that only self-knowledge can engender. This man had, after all, effected that most feared experience in the life of any member of her race: eviction. And by a landowning lord, no less. The raven itself was hoarse that croaked the entrance of Shaftoe under her battlements.

But this was Ireland, and County Kerry besides. There still flowed in her veins Kerry blood that would rebel at the refusal of hospice on such a day as this. Her ancestry pleaded this drenched man's cause. Tradition formed in the mists of antiquity weighed upon her soul. Instructions voiced by her father and her mother, her uncles and her aunts, her grandparents on her father's side and her grandparents on her mother's side, pierced her heart. Choking with resentment but obedient to her race, she said, “I have no one to send but yourself for your endangered architect, but I'm familiar with the ways of tea and can probably scratch up a biscuit or two, if you require it.”

With that, the lights went out. The power was off, probably for miles and miles around. “Ah, Lord Shaftoe,” Kitty crowed, “welcome to castle living.”

“What's happened to the lights?”

“They're out.”

“But the generator … ?”

“What generator?”

“You have no generator?”

“Candles. Marvelous invention, A guarantee of independence from the elements, to say nothing of the power authority. And we also have a device called a match. You strike it against a rough surface, and a flame issues forth.” As she was saying this she went from wall to wall sconce, lighting candles that sent flickering shadows of cow parts—mostly heads and snouts—jigging up and down the stone walls.

“I must remember to tell Mr. Skiddings, my architect, that a generator comes before all else.”

“I should think you might want to look first for the gunpowder.”

“There is no gunpowder.”

“Smart decision. Conducive to a better night's sleep.”

Now all the candles were lit, except for those in the great iron chandelier suspended from the middle of the highbeamed ceiling. Kitty felt she'd done enough to hold off the dark, especially since it was still midafternoon and the possibility of a late sun was still to be considered. She would have to let down the three-tiered ring by means of a pulley and rope, and the noise would further disturb the cows, whose milk was no doubt already curdling, what with lightning, thunder, darkness, and Lord Shaftoe. For a final gesture, in tribute to the gift of Prometheus, Kitty lit a single candle held in a holder shaped like a Persian shoe and decorated at the heel not with a silken embellishment but with a sturdy ring through which she could slip her index finger and light her way—and his lordship's way—to the scullery, where tea and biscuits would be served.

But before she could, in the servile manner of a housekeeper so far superior in status and in worth to any lord, say the words scripted for her from time immemorial—“If you would care to come this way”—there was heard from outside, above the shrieks of the storm, a wounded, frightened cry that could be characterized only as the first baritone banshee ever to give utterance within sound of the Western Sea.

“Ah, good. Mr. Skiddings, my architect. Perhaps you'd be so kind as to let him in. He must be catching his death.”

It was at this moment that Kitty decided—a decision that had, for her, the force of an oath—that she would make these moments a time of testing. Now was her chance to measure her endurance, to see how much nonsense she could put up with and not combust. She would lend herself completely to his lordship's requests, demands, remarks, and observings, taking to herself the full burden of his loftiness, allowing herself to have one stupidity after another rammed into her consciousness until at last the fated eruption would come, her volcanic outburst that would reduce the man to ash, then bury him beneath the hot flow of her searing displeasure. She would enjoy that most fragile of her many virtues, patience. She would explore its strengths and discover at last its limits. Out of consideration for her previous adversaries, she had permitted the eruption to take place long before its full force had gathered. For his lordship, no such consideration would be made. He was, all unaware, taking his chances, just as she, all aware, was taking hers. She was now entering uncharted territory. Never before had she given herself this particular license. She felt the gleeful euphoria that only a malevolent daring could provide. She rather enjoyed the sensation. Patience, the first phase of the experiment, descended.