This Cold Country (26 page)

Toward the end of the summer, Daisy began to dream of the terrified girls drawn upward by the huge, silent, canvas monster. When she woke, her heart pounding, she would sit up in bed, force herself to take deep breaths, remind herself she wasn't in any physical danger and, after a while, she would try to go back to sleep. In her dream, as in her imagination, the tragedy took place on a sunny day and the barrage balloon was silhouetted against a blue and cloudless sky, the beauty of the day making the incident even more horrible.

The dreams had started a little after Corisande had moved out of Dunmaine, and they had increased in frequency after a letter arrived letting Daisy and Mickey know that Corisande and Edmund would be spending the next few weeks—until their wedding—visiting friends in Meath and shopping in Dublin. The letter mentioned neither where they would be staying nor how to get in touch with them in the event of an emergency. The letter had arrived the morning of Daisy's visit to the family solicitor.

Mr. Hudson's offices were airless, slow moving, and full of papers. The papers were tidy and lacked a sense of immediacy. Daisy sensed wills and the management of small estates and the occasional renewal of a lease or sale of a parcel of farmland. Nothing pressing, nothing that entailed a sudden or decisive move, nevertheless the kinds of procedures that once set in motion would move, however slowly, inexorably toward an eventual conclusion.

As with her conversation with the grocer, Daisy had the feeling there was not much she could tell Mr. Hudson that he did not already know. Nevertheless, she explained who she was, spoke of Corisande's impending marriage, answered as best she could—not very well—questions about old Mrs. Nugent's health and about Patrick, from whom there had still been no second letter. Mr. Hudson—Mickey had referred to him as Hudson, but Daisy could not imagine doing so, even when not in his presence—nodded as though he were registering each new item of information in some dusty but neat pigeonhole in his memory.

“So you see, with Corisande gone and Patrick not here and Mrs. Nugent and Mickey—you see?”

“Quite, Mrs. Nugent.”

“I thought I should come and ask you about the day-to-day management of Dunmaine. Wages and—” She broke off, aware that wages were not the only expense in running a house and remembering the small but suddenly sinister pile of thin buff envelopes on the hall table. And the couple of envelopes Mickey had tossed on the sideboard the morning of Patrick's letter; more than three weeks later they still lay there unopened.

Mr. Hudson nodded, his expression attentive, courteous, and apparently unaware that Daisy was asking him to pick up her cue, to volunteer some helpful information, to give her some hint of how the domestic economy of Dunmaine worked.

“Who is supposed to pay the bills?” she asked at last, a little desperately.

“Mrs. Nugent. Mrs. Nugent senior.”

“And when—how does she do that?”

“I post her a check at the beginning of each month.”

“Mr. Hudson,” Daisy said firmly, “Mrs. Nugent is very old. She is bedridden. I have not heard her speak since I came to Dunmaine. I doubt very much whether she is in any condition to write a check or pay a bill.”

“I think perhaps Miss Corisande Nugent deposits the check in her own account and pays the wages and bills.”

“In that case you had perhaps better write the check to me and I'll pay the bills.”

“I'm not sure I—” Mr. Hudson looked as though he had no intrinsic objection to what Daisy proposed but that he was not prepared to accommodate her in any way that could conceivably later cause him inconvenience or embarrassment.

“You have been writing the checks to Mrs. Maud Nugent?”

“Yes.”

“And Corisande has been depositing them in her own account.”

“I imagine so.”

“Very well. From now on I would like you to write the checks to Mrs. Nugent, and—I will take it from there.”

There was a pause while Mr. Hudson considered Daisy's proposal, then he nodded.

“Very well,” he said, “but I shall have to consult the other trustee. The executor of Colonel Nugent's will.”

“Colonel Nugent?”

“Mr. Pat's grandfather. His executor is Sir Ambrose Sweeney.”

Having invoked Ambrose's name, Mr. Hudson seemed to feel himself not obliged to divulge any more information. Daisy needed to know, if she were to find herself the grown-up in charge, how much money there was, to whom it belonged, and how much of it was needed to keep Dunmaine running; it seemed she would have to address those questions to Ambrose.

 

THE FIRST TIME
Daisy visited Maud on her own, she introduced herself and announced her intention of reading to the old lady several afternoons a week. In the afternoon, after the time she imagined Maud rested, before tea. She intended to make the visits part of her routine and knew that if she attempted and failed to make conversation with Maud these visits would become short, sticky, and pointless. Instead, Daisy settled herself by the fire—usually the warmest place in the house—and read a book that gave her pleasure. If Maud chose to listen—was capable of understanding—so much the better; if not, she could interrupt if she had anything to say to Daisy, or she could doze while Daisy read.

Daisy did not, during the first few weeks, form an opinion of how much Maud understood—of what she was told, of who Daisy was, of the story and wit of
Evelina.
After a little while she thought it didn't matter. Maud was Patrick's grandmother and it seemed natural that Daisy should behave as a member of the family, even if Maud, as it seemed entirely possible, didn't know, or perhaps did know but forgot between visits, that Daisy was Patrick's wife.

Soon, Daisy found herself understanding what the others, it seemed to her, had so inadequately described—Maud's mental state or capacity: sometimes Maud understood what she was told, sometimes she didn't, but the difficulty was to engage her interest since essentially she didn't care very much. Although Mrs. Glynne had once remarked, “Sometimes she can surprise you,” Daisy was still waiting to be surprised.

***

AMBROSE CAME TO
tea on Saturday. Tea was usually served in the library, but Daisy had asked for tea and the drinks tray to be brought to the study and for a fire to be lit there.

“I'll just pop up and have a word with Maud,” Ambrose said after he had greeted Daisy, kissing her on both cheeks and giving her a brief but hearty hug.

Daisy waited in the study. The desk, to the right of the fireplace, was in the darkest part of the room. A tall desk, with drawers below the writing surface and with doored shelves above, it had been, when Daisy decided to use it for household accounts, closed and locked, but with the key, a yellowed ivory oval disc attached, in the lock.

After her interview with the solicitor, Daisy had taken the unopened bills into the study and opened the desk. A Christmas card and its envelope, with a postmark from just before the war—and the desk in the library, with its rusty-nibbed pen and dust-filled inkpot—led her to assume it had been some time since any Nugent had devoted much energy to writing letters or adding up household accounts.

Daisy took the top sheet of writing paper, too discolored from time and dust to use for correspondence, and opened the envelopes. Soon she found herself crossing out items on the list of money owed; the total of one account was often included as a previous balance in the next bill and the new total carried, intact, to the following month's bill. The butcher had not been paid in three months.

Daisy was shocked by the length and range of debt incurred. It seemed that Corisande had not paid, or even opened, the majority of bills in some months. Daisy copied out her first list with the changes and corrections. Although the totals shocked her, she felt as though having neatly listed them was the first step to straightening out the messy finances of her new family. There seemed something almost familiar about the feeling that she had achieved some goal and she remembered how responsible Pip, in
Great Expectations,
had felt after listing his debts.

Nevertheless, when Ambrose came down to the study, she was waiting for him, efficient and businesslike.

“Would you like some tea?” she asked.

“I had a cup with Maud.”

Daisy tried to imagine Maud sitting up in bed, wearing a soft, lacy bedjacket and holding a teacup in her hands, having a cozy chat with Ambrose.

“You had tea with Mrs. Nugent?” she said, asking a good deal more than the redundant question.

“She eats and drinks, like you and me. Specially tea, and of course she doesn't understand rationing.”

“And you had a little chat? What does she talk about?”

“She doesn't say much, but every now and then she can surprise you.”

Now Daisy knew that her grandmother-in-law was not in a coma and that she enjoyed a cup of tea. It added, although not much, to her knowledge.

“So, help yourself to a drink.”

Ambrose poured himself a small whiskey and added quite a lot of water; Daisy assumed he was going to give her his full and serious attention.

“Corisande has gone and soon she'll be married and anyway she seems to have shrugged off any responsibility for the running of Dunmaine.”

Ambrose said nothing but managed, nevertheless, to confirm Daisy's supposition that Corisande's new domestic arrangements were common knowledge.

“She seems to have left the household accounts—well, there aren't, as far as I can see, any household accounts per se—but the bills haven't been paid. For some time.”

Daisy hesitated; Ambrose was wrinkling his nose, his head a little quizzically to one side.

“What?” she asked.

As Daisy watched he opened a drawer in a table behind him and smiled.

“Look,” he said.

Inside the drawer was a large and perfect pear. There was a faint scent of fruit and unpolished wood. Daisy felt as though she were Alice in Wonderland, the pear huge since it came up almost to the height of the drawer, and magical. She looked enquiringly at Ambrose.

“Conference pear. Corisande must have put it in the drawer and forgotten about it.”

Ambrose opened the other drawer; in it there were two smaller pale green and speckled golden pears.

“Why are they in the drawers?”

“You mean is it some Irish eccentricity? It's how you ripen them. The trick is to remember where you've put 'em.”

“So,” Daisy said firmly, “Mr. Hudson said I should talk to you. I seem to be the one people are asking for money and the one who orders things from shops where we have accounts.”

“Faute de mieux.”

“So I suppose I am in charge. Old Mrs. Nugent—and I don't suppose Mickey—”

“Quite.”

“So I thought I should know what the situation here is—and, as Patrick's wife I suppose I have—”

“Some rights and responsibilities. Obligations.”

Daisy paused; Ambrose sipped his drink and looked encouragingly at her over the top of his glass.

“Damn it, Ambrose, stop being so cagey. I'm the only one here who doesn't know what's going on. Every time I make a move I come up against some new and chilling fact and I have to start all over again. They know that I don't know and they wait until I ask a question or make a request that is a cue for them—I can see it in their eyes.”

“What do you want to know? Most people think a little merciful ignorance is a blessing.”

“Everything.”

Again a moment of silence. Daisy drew in an aggressive lungful of air, and Ambrose seemed to become alert.

“Fire away.”

Suddenly Daisy found herself afraid. There were things she needed to know and, entangled with them, probably things she would rather not know. She could see the wisdom of Ambrose's willingness to answer questions rather than relate the family history piecemeal.

“Who does Dunmaine belong to?”

“Maud,” Ambrose said. He sounded surprised and Daisy could see, as she now so often did, that the answer to this, and probably many other questions that bothered her, could not have been other than what it was.

“Maud. And, of course, the bank.”

“The bank?”

“The bank. The whole place is mortgaged to the hilt.”

If Daisy could have had her way—and she knew that, having dragged Ambrose to Dunmaine on a wet afternoon, she could not—she would have asked him to come back in a day or two when she had digested the information he had just given her.

“So who pays the bills?”

“In theory, Maud. They come addressed to her and the accounts are in her name.”

“But she has abnegated responsibility for them?”

“Basically she's given up. She's old and tired and sad—her only son is dead and she's outlived most of her friends—and she's gone to bed and closed her eyes and closed her mind. She's had enough.”

Daisy wanted, now that Ambrose had given her the opening, to ask about Patrick's parents, but she knew she had to deal with the more immediate point.

“Isn't there some legal thing that one does when an old person is no longer capable of looking after her affairs?”

“Power of attorney. Yes, Maud would be a prime candidate for such a procedure. She would welcome it, I imagine—if you got her on a day when she could understand.”

“But?”

“But—there's a pretty good case to be made for letting sleeping dogs lie.”

“And it is?”

Now Ambrose was the one to draw a deep breath.

“I don't much like landing you with all this stuff at the same time. The rest of us have had years to get used to it. The house is mortgaged; Maud is very old; I am the trustee. We all know this can't go on forever, but it's probably better if it can go on until Maud dies and the war is over. We're not talking about a long time, in either case.”