This Cold Country (7 page)

D
AISY STOOD IN
front of a large, mottled looking glass. She held the diamond necklace up to her throat, holding the clasp together behind her neck without hooking it. The necklace was pretty, but sparse; a few perfectly respectable diamonds surrounded by diamond chips set into a band of dark silver, with some smaller stones set in strands that dropped from the neckband. Daisy thought it was probably several hundred years old.

“Trying it on for size?” Patrick's reflection joined Daisy's in the looking glass. Although his tone was light and amused, it lacked gentleness, and Daisy immediately felt defensive.

“I'm not trying it on, I'm just holding it up to see what it looks like.”

Patrick raised one eyebrow and Daisy knew what he was insinuating. He thought she was imagining herself wearing the diamonds, having first married James and then killed off his mother.

“Lady Nugent asked me to unpick it; it was mounted on a frame so she could wear it as a tiara. It's been like that since the coronation.”

Patrick laughed and if she hadn't been feeling offended and cross, Daisy would have laughed, too. But she was hurt by the insulting implication of his words and angry at the way she had been treated by James and his family that day.

“I don't know if this is an example of upper-class hospitality, or if your family is simply lacking in good manners, but I have been rudely and unkindly treated by everyone since I got here.”

Patrick again raised an eyebrow, and Daisy once again read arrogance and pride in his expression. She would have liked to slap him, but though she was angry, her actions and even more important, her incipient tears, were under control. Daisy rarely cried, and when she did so, her tears were more often caused by repressed anger than by self-pity.

“You and James seemed to be getting along pretty well last night,” Patrick said, his tone light, but his face in the looking glass, over the shoulder of her reflection, was cold and disapproving.

Daisy said nothing. She assumed—and hoped—Patrick knew nothing of what had happened later that night; it was, of course, possible that he knew that James had visited her room, and also, more horribly, that he believed that his cousin had done so by arrangement or had not been rebuffed were the visit a surprise.

Daisy's eyes met Patrick's; she had no idea what to say.

“Here, let me.” And Patrick took the ends of the necklace out of her hands and held the diamonds high enough for them to be seen against the skin of her neck, rather than the hand-knitted jersey she wore.

Almost in spite of herself, Daisy looked again at her reflection. She nodded slightly as she saw for the first time the point of diamonds. It was not just that they were themselves beautiful, hard, sharp, brilliant, but they also lit up her face. Her skin, slightly brown from working outdoors, and lightly freckled, now seemed smoother and creamier; her eyes a deeper blue; and her hair, a pleasant but undistinguished brown, had developed richer, darker touches and a tinge of chestnut. She was aware of Patrick watching her.

“Can you see the northern lights from here? In the winter?”

“I shouldn't think so,” Patrick said, blinking at this sudden change of subject. “I never have, anyway.”

Daisy saw that her expression was thoughtful as she met Patrick's eye in the looking glass.

“Lovely,” she said, “but as you can see, it doesn't fit.” She took the necklace out of his hands and returned it to a flat worn leather box lined in dark red silk. She shut the box and hooked the flimsy metal clasp.

“Perhaps,” she said, “you would like to return it to Lady Nugent. She needs it for this evening.”

 

DAISY SNEEZED. THE
bedroom was cold and she felt a slight pressure in her forehead and a tenderness on one side of her throat. She was getting a cold. Already treated disdainfully by the Nugents, when they weren't completely ignoring her, she would now be a pariah to the other guests at the dance that evening—a red-nosed wallflower, the other wallflowers edging away from her, alone and sniffling into a damp handkerchief. She wondered, for a moment, what kind of day she would have had, had she, the night before, whipped the “snood” off her hair, stuffed it under the pillow, and allowed James to make love to her.

She'd probably still have been getting a cold, but apart from that, would breakfast, for instance, have been different? Maybe not. But how much worse, she thought, it would have been, if having given her virginity to James—a man who knew her so little that the question of whether or not she were a virgin had not been raised—she had come down to breakfast and found he had already left for the day.

Lady Nugent had, at least, known her name; James's sisters apparently did not. Of the five people eating breakfast, Patrick was the only one whom she had ever met before. It would, Daisy now thought, have been better if her entrance had frozen a conversation. The lack of reaction to her arrival and apology for being late was even more disconcerting. It seemed as though no one quite registered her presence; one of the girls did not even look up from her plate.

“Which of the Treaty Ports will the Germans invade? Queenstown, Berehaven, or Lough Swilly?” a gray-haired woman was asking Patrick.

“Since, although I'm Irish, I'm an officer in His Majesty's Armed Forces, I probably wouldn't be the first person the German High Command would confide in.”

Daisy hesitated, still unacknowledged and unwelcomed, at the door. Although their voices were not raised, and Patrick had replied with a smile, there could be no one in the room unaware that the woman was baiting him, that he was very angry but choosing not to show it. What was not so clear was whether the others were enjoying the woman's attack through patriotic conviction, sycophancy, or just because it was Patrick's turn to be bullied or teased.

Even though she was still standing awkwardly at the door, Daisy was curious about both the anger and the subject that had—ostensibly, at least—been the cause. And Patrick, with whom she felt quite cross herself for his cool and dismissive manner toward her the previous evening, would, she thought, probably be a good person, were the atmosphere less tense, to explain some of the more confusing aspects of Southern Irish neutrality. And it was confusing. She knew—or at least supposed—that Southern Ireland was behaving poorly, remaining neutral while Hitler threatened the future of Europe. And the IRA had exploded bombs in London just before the war. But she also knew that many men from neutral Eire had enlisted in the British army. And why had England, only two years before, the shadow of war already over Europe, so casually handed back to Ireland the naval ports that they had held under treaty? The ports that the gray-haired woman was now taunting Patrick about?

“Good-morning-I-hope-you-slept-well-breakfast-is-on-the-sideboard,” Lady Nugent said vaguely. Nothing fey about her vagueness; it was more that Daisy was an irritation that if given no more attention than deserved need not distract her.

“We call it Cobh. Queenstown's now called Cobh. It's spelled
c-o-b-h,
but it's pronounced ‘Cove,'” Patrick said in a purely informational tone. “There's no
v
in Gaelic.”

Daisy looked at the substantial remains of breakfast set out in two chafing dishes. One contained, in a shallow pool of warm grease, fried eggs, fried bread, and fried tomatoes. The other was half filled with thick, solid porridge. For the first time since Daisy had enlisted in the Land Army, she looked at a meal with no wish to eat any of it. A little to one side there stood a silver toast rack with some damp, caved-in toast. Daisy helped herself to a triangle and then, because it looked so puny on her plate, another. She poured herself some tea from a large silver pot. Very strong and not quite hot enough.

At the breakfast table, the others were eating methodically; the daughter who had partially acknowledged Daisy's presence glanced scornfully at the toast. Daisy sat down and, after slightly too long a pause, Lady Nugent introduced her to those present.

“My daughters, Lizzie and Kate. Patrick I think you have already met. This is my sister, Gladys Glynne.”

Mrs. Glynne. Gladys Glynne. Aunt Glad. Her name had come up as a frequent visitor, an integral part of the household, when Rosemary was describing the inhabitants of Bannock House. “Somewhere between Sergeant Cuff and the Grand Inquisitor,” Rosemary had said. Adding, with the inflection that reminded Daisy that some part of Rosemary's family was Irish, “You'd want to mind yourself there. It won't do you any good, of course.”

Mrs. Glynne now turned her attention to Daisy. In the background Daisy could hear the discussion, now openly tense, continue. The words “Black and Tans” spoken by both Patrick and Lizzie; Lizzie apparently standing in for the otherwise occupied Mrs. Glynne. Daisy would have liked to listen, but Mrs. Glynne demanded her full attention. In a kindly, interested way she drew Daisy out. Before Daisy had finished the first triangle of her soggy toast she had revealed her age, that she had been to boarding school, that she had one sister but no brothers, that her father was a rector—and a younger son—that Daisy's mother was well educated and from a perfectly respectable but not rich Norfolk family. Daisy knew that she was being placed. She also knew that this placing was only in the details; the Nugents would, without Mrs. Glynne's more vigorous approach—perhaps starting with Kate's glance at her meager helping of toast—have had no difficulty in knowing as much as they needed about Daisy's background and antecedents. Daisy knew there was nothing for her to be ashamed of; there was no suggestion that they thought her mannerless, ignorant, or vulgar. They saw her as she saw herself, as coming from what had once been minor landed gentry.

None of the others paid any attention to the interrogation; she was of no interest to them. Lady Nugent seemed preoccupied and, since the dance was to be held in her house that evening and Daisy had no reason to disbelieve James's assessment of the servant problem, she probably was. James's sisters were equally disengaged. Both were thin, pale; a reddish tinge to their hair suggested that freckles, rather than Daisy's golden brown, would result from exposure to the sun. Lizzie glanced at Daisy with an almost complete lack of interest; it was the first time she had looked at her since Daisy entered the dining room. Patrick's face was devoid of expression, although Daisy thought he was half listening.

Aunt Glad was rich, according to Rosemary, and had no children. There was a stepdaughter, but Aunt Glad was on record as considering the girl already to have more money than was good for her.

In return for her answers to Mrs. Glynne's questions, Daisy learned only that James had eaten breakfast early and left to fish. He might or might not be home for lunch. Daisy understood that she now occupied the position of an inconvenient pet adopted by an irresponsible child and left in the care of his exasperated and otherwise occupied family.

 

DAISY SNEEZED AGAIN
; her feet were still cold and her eyes were beginning to feel puffy. She had time to spare—had had too much time to spare all day—and putting on her heavy jersey, she crept under the eiderdown. To avoid brooding over the far from satisfactory day, her thoughts returned to the scene at breakfast. While she was sure the Nugents and Gladys Glynne were capable of a full-scale row about as academic a subject as what fly James was, or should be, using best to catch a trout, she was not sure if what had passed between Mrs. Glynne and Patrick, watched expressionlessly by the female Nugents, was an indication of deeply held beliefs—fears?—or was merely a line of teasing that had produced results in the past. Ireland was not a country Daisy had thought about much, beyond having the sense, reading between the lines of her school history book, that they'd had a pretty raw deal from their English neighbors. They were a neutral country; did Mrs. Glynne really fear that they would welcome a German invasion of England via their ports? Were there Irish people angry enough actively to aid the Germans? Daisy didn't know, but thought it unfair to bait an officer, as Patrick had put it, in His Majesty's Armed Forces. And Sir Guy Wilcox—close enough to home for Rosemary to have known his wife—would his Fascism really have been extreme enough for him to betray his own country to the Germans? Was it possible that there were still members of the English upper classes who admired Hitler? And she thought again about the beautiful Lady Mosley and her newborn baby.

After breakfast she had asked if there was anything she could do to help, but despite the staff shortage, Lady Nugent seemed to have delegated all tasks to a small troupe of women press-ganged from the village. And Aunt Glad traveled with a maid who had done the flowers. Lady Nugent managed, not unkindly, to suggest to Daisy that the most helpful thing she could do would be to relieve her hostess of the responsibility of entertaining her. Daisy said she would love to take a long walk. “If you really want to make yourself useful, you could take the dogs for a walk,” Lady Nugent said, her manner that of one ticking off two small items at the bottom of a very long list.

Daisy, wearing sensible shoes, set out with an overweight spaniel and an elderly Labrador. Since the dogs were both lazy and well trained, she stopped worrying about losing them by the time she reached the end of the avenue. Setting out along an unpaved road in the opposite direction to the one she had traveled the night before, Daisy followed the outer wall of the Nugent estate. Ivy-covered in parts, with glimpses of the woods showing through the broken-down bits, Daisy thought it beautiful. She also thought it a pity that James—the James who had met her at the station—was not with her. She wondered if she had, by rejecting him the night before, lost someone of great value, the only person with whom she had so far felt a complete sense of intimacy. Or had she merely been fooled by the charm of a practiced seducer, a practiced seducer who now couldn't be bothered to go through even the motions of good manners?