Moira came out of the twelfth century and back into the twentieth as if she was walking off a lighted stage set.
The account was a bit sparse and it was couched in the rather florid style of the seventeenth century, but it had been remarkably easy to see the fearful Cosimo and his dazzling lady, and to visualise Simon holding up a crucifix to dismiss the stranger. Moira thought she would finish reading this tomorrow, because it was getting dark in the library and deciphering the thin spidery writing was beginning to make her head ache. But she would like to know a bit more about it all and she would certainly like to know the outcome. How complete was John Joseph’s transcription? It might be worth asking could she see the original.
She poured herself another cup of tea from the tray brought earlier by Matthew. There were no casual saucerless mugs with sugar ready stirred in for Abbey guests: the Brothers lived fairly austerely but they had their own code for visitors and the tray held a flowered teapot with matching milk jug and sugar bowl and a plate of freshly baked biscuits. The monks did not have afternoon tea themselves, but they thought people in the outside world did.
She turned back to the manuscript, thinking she would just make a few final notes, and as she did so, she heard footsteps coming along the corridor outside. For an instant her heart bounded, in case it might be Ciaran – Brother Ciaran – coming to see how she was getting on. If he had time, perhaps they could have a cup of tea together and she could tell him what she had found and discuss Simon’s manuscript with him. She was just framing a welcoming sentence, when the door was pushed open, and her father stood in the doorway.
‘I’ve come to take you home, my dear,’ he said.
Edward had not liked to see his Moire Silk so completely absorbed in something he had no part of and he picked up the transcript of Simon’s journeys, frowning a little, hoping to find it shallow, trivial nonsense that could be indulgently dismissed. He flipped the pages over, picking out a sentence here and there. It was almost as he had thought but it was not quite as trivial as he had hoped. There was a good deal of rubbishy story-telling about the Abbey’s founder and there was some preposterous tale in flowery language about Brother Simon and some Italian woman. Edward was surprised to find such gossip in a monastery library.
The brief description of the Italian creature – Isabella, was it? – struck an unexpected nerve.
A thin bedgown, and hair streaming over her shoulders, the colour of molten copper . . . He glanced up to where Moira was seated at the desk, the little electric wall lamp directly above shining on her hair. Lending it the appearance of molten copper . . .
There had been a moment when Edward had stood in the library doorway, and seen Moira look up, startled, and in that moment it had not been his little girl at all, it had been a stranger looking up with the reflex annoyance of someone disturbed from some deeply interesting task.
Someone with hair the colour of molten copper . . .
And then she had smiled and of course it was Moira, dressed neatly in the way Edward himself had advised over breakfast.
‘If I were you, I should wear your nice navy skirt and a plain blouse today,’ he had said, and Mary had said to be sure to take a cardigan as well because it would be chilly later on. ‘And it would be better to tie your hair back,’ Edward had added.
There had been a moment when Moira had looked as if she was going to argue, which had surprised Edward, but then she had smiled and said, Yes, it was as well to be conventional with the monks, and had put on the navy skirt and a white blouse and tied her hair back with a navy ribbon, and Edward had smiled his approval and said, There! Now she was her daddy’s pretty little girl again.
But as he had stood in the doorway, he had seen that the neatly confined hair had escaped from its ribbon and was tumbling about her shoulders—
Curling over her small firm breasts—
And of course, the last thing a respectable father did, the last thing a good Catholic husband did was to look at that spilling silken hair or at the neat white blouse which was in fact a shirt of thin soft lawn, tailored like a man’s dress shirt and unexpectedly seductive. Edward would make sure that Mary told Moira that the blouse did not become her. It was remarkable how uncomfortable it was making him feel. Edward was naturally aware of his Church’s ruling on the harbouring of impure thoughts and he was scrupulous about confessing them, unless it was Father Kane on confession duty, in which case he waited until it was old Father Dougal’s turn, because Dougal was getting a bit deaf and could be counted on to miss most of what you said.
Mallow, seen by the light of the morning, was as tumbledown as it had looked on Isarel’s arrival.
He winced as he drew the faded curtains back and felt a stab of pain above one eye – sunlight! Death to a wine-induced headache! – but managed to set a kettle to boil on the Aga which was still warm from last evening. He swallowed two aspirin, giving himself the option of a third, foraged for the bread bought a hundred years ago on the way here, and managed to make toast by propping an old-fashioned toasting fork in front of the Aga. The creamy Irish butter melted into the thick bread, sunlight filtered in from outside and there was a scent of something sweet and nostalgic drifting in from the garden. Insensibly, Isarel’s spirits lifted and although it was probably only the aspirin working, he felt so much better that he got up to pour a second cup of tea and toast another slice of bread. He remembered adding a jar of honey to the provisions and hunted it out. Tea and buttered toast and honey. Very English. It pleased him to be so English out here on the edge of the wild Irish coast. He spread the honey thickly and tilted his chair back to look through the window, thinking hard.
Clearly his midnight visitor had been in the later stages of madness and equally clearly, Isarel had been mad with him. Had they really walked through the copse to the Abbey with that thing – what was its name? Ahasuerus? – following, and had they really pushed it down into the noisome tomb?
At one o’clock in the morning, after two bottles of wine, it had been an intriguing tale and a bizarre adventure, but in the cold light of day it was plainly nonsense and it had probably not really happened. Isarel began to wonder whether Ciaran had been a monk at all, and whether his first assumption that he was entertaining an escaped madman might not have been correct.
But if he was mad last night, then so was I. And the music was there to give the lie to the madness. Jude’s music. I don’t dare think about it. I certainly don’t dare believe it.
Isarel got up from the table and put his cup and plate and knife in the sink before starting on a tour of exploration. If Mallow was really falling to pieces it would be as well to find out which bits were likely to drop off first. It would certainly be more to the point than brooding over ancient entombed beings and devil-inspired music. He supposed he would have to walk or drive round to the Abbey later – or maybe Ciaran would come to Mallow – but it could be put off for a few hours yet.
He made notes as he went, expecting to find it depressing, but in the event not finding it any such thing. Mallow was neglected and battered, but beneath the decay and the dirt the fabric was very good indeed. Isarel was no architect or building surveyor, but even he could see that the damp patches on the walls had been caused by nothing worse than leaking and blocked roof gutters and that although the window frames were rotten, the beautiful sandstone lintels surrounding them were sound. And seen by the morning light the brickwork was lovely: soft mellow red. The mortar had crumbled here and there, but not to any alarming extent. It could be – what did builders call it? – re-pointing, wasn’t it?
He went back inside and up to the first floor landing where light slanted across the bare floorboards, making the dust motes dance in and out, and where a small secondary stair wound rather precariously up to the attics. This would be the crunch: you could repair or replace window frames and you could renew crumbling mortar, but if roof joists had collapsed you were in severe trouble.
But the roof was dry and sweet, and the trusses and joists were as solid and as strong as the day Mallow was built. A few tiles were missing and the roofing felt was torn, but he thought it was nothing that a good builder could not put right in an afternoon. Jude, you may have been an evil, faithless bastard and you may have died that shameful death, but your house is the most beautiful thing that has happened to me for a very long time. He stood looking through the little windows of the attic room, seeing the smudge of blue and green to the west that was the wild, beautiful Irish rim. This had been Jude’s bolt-hole, this was where he had come when he wanted to run away from the world, to work, to study a score, to create. Or to be with one of his women.
There were one or two brief, tantalisingly vague accounts in the many biographies written about Jude, suggesting that he had had a number of mistresses before he married Isarel’s grandmother in Vienna just before the war. Isarel remembered one account by a lady who had stayed here in the Thirties and who related how her host would sit at the head of the polished, mahogany dining table, drinking Chateau Yquem and dining off foie gras and quails by candlelight – ‘Looking like a cross between a devil and a satyr.’ Even if they dined late, Jude often got up at dawn and went down to the music room to pour music – occasionally his own, sometimes other people’s – into the cool daybreak. ‘He had the same remarkable gifts as the maestro, Arthur Nikisch, who in the Eighteen Nineties held his audiences and orchestra both completely spell-bound,’ she had said, thus revealing that she was at least a decade older than she had previously admitted.
Another one, living as a grande dame in America, an unashamed seventy-something, had related how she used to go to Jude’s apartment in one of the tall old houses in the Augustiner Strasse in Vienna, and how she would sit entranced as he played Schumann and Greig until the air sizzled with vibrancy and the room was bathed in a fiery blaze from the sun setting behind the Cathedral. How there had always been a silver wine cooler containing champagne in the bedroom and silk sheets on the bed. Decadent in only the way that Vienna before the war could be decadent, she was reported as saying. Certainly there had been more than a trace of what her generation had called the ‘cad’ about Jude Weissman. But when he sat down at the piano you ceased to care, because you would have followed him anywhere he cared to invite you.
Isarel thought that even allowing for the bias of these memories, Jude must have been a killer with the women. If you did not know better you would almost see him as a kind of demi-god, instead of the cold, calculating traitor he had really been.
All that, he thought, staring through the grimed windowpanes of Mallow’s attics; all those women and all that adulation, and I never once suspected that Jude might have uncovered the Black Chant.
He frowned, shaking his head to dislodge the blurred shreds of memory and went downstairs again to continue with his list of repairs. Electricity was a priority, of course. What about plumbing? The bathroom was functional although that was about all you could say for it, and at least there was a bathroom and not a grisly little hut at the bottom of the garden. The pipework looked as if it was lead, which was impractical and probably dangerous; the bath was a massive iron affair on clawed feet and the loo was enclosed in a square mahogany box.
He surveyed the kitchen as the kettle boiled for a mug of coffee. He would like to keep the huge old dresser and the red tiles on the floor would polish up rather attractively. He could have a rag rug on them if such a thing could still be found, and a wooden rocking chair in the corner by the Aga. The Aga was proving unexpectedly efficient now that he had fathomed how it worked and discovered that you had to keep it burning more or less permanently. He thought he might keep it. But an electric hob and a few more cupboards would not hurt and it would be nice to have a fridge and instant hot water. Could he afford central heating? It would probably be economical in the long run, but it might be expensive to install. He drank the coffee and went on with his plans, resolutely ignoring the shofar which lay on the piano where he had put it after returning to Mallow in the early hours of the morning.
I’m not looking at you, said Isarel to it, silently. I’m not seeing you. In fact I’ve forgotten you’re there.
He concentrated on exploring the house, clinging to practicalities, and all the while a part of his mind was busy repudiating what had happened in the Abbey’s crypt and overlaying it with other, more believable things. Roof tiles and electrical wiring and woodworm. As the day wore on, he found it possible to relegate Ciaran O’Connor and his eerie story of immortal creatures who crawled up out of coffins to a kind of mental limbo. By the time he had assembled a scratch lunch of bread and tuna fish and tomatoes, with an apple and cheese to round it off, Ahasuerus was beginning to take on the quality of a bad dream. After lunch he drove into Curran Glen and discovered that one small firm could handle building, electrical wiring and plumbing, and that although the premises appeared haphazard and the bright-eyed, bow-legged proprietor was happy-go-lucky, the initial suggestions for the work were surprisingly efficient and unexpectedly imaginative, and the tentatively discussed figures not as high as he had been fearing.
But as the late-afternoon twilight stole across Mallow’s tangled gardens, he found himself back in the music room. It was absurd to want to play the music again and in view of last night it was probably dangerous, always supposing that last night had existed outside of a dream. It was not beyond possibility that some of his students had laced his toothpaste with LSD or Ecstasy or whatever disgusting drug was currently in fashion.
Beyond the windows, the lilac and purple dusk was stealing over the tangled gardens, and without warning a fragment of a half-remembered poem – Coleridge? – slid into Isarel’s mind. Something about a man dreaming he had died and gone to Paradise, where he had plucked a rose. Only when he awoke, he found that he was still holding the rose . . . It was a shivery notion, but it was a seductive one, as well.
Did I travel to the centre of a dream last night? thought Isarel. Only it wasn’t Coleridge’s rose-tinted Paradise, it was a dark and ancient dream, someone else’s nightmare, a drifting flotsam – or do I mean jetsam? – of something primeval and death-ridden.
Did I bring the rose back with me? He looked at the shofar again and at the sheets of musical notation on the Bluthner’s stand.
There was only one way to find out. There was only one way to lay the lingering ghost, and that was to deliberately go back into the dark rose-scented nightmare.
The thought: Jude would do it, closed about his mind.
Isarel sat down at the piano and reached for the shofar.
Father seemed to think that the brief afternoon’s work in the Abbey library had tired Moira. He walked unnecessarily close as they went down from the Abbey, taking her arm firmly. He would not, of course, have realised that Moira found this embarrassing because of the back of his hand touching her breast; he would be being protective. He was protective as they crossed a rough bit of path, even though Moira was perfectly able to walk over it unaided.
He asked about her work and said, nonsense, of course he would not think it boring, he wanted to know everything she had done, she was to omit no details. They should discuss it over a cosy supper, and then it must be an early bed. Moira thought of several responses to this, none of which were utterable. She tried not to mind about having her walk spoiled. They were in sight of Mallow House now, and this was the part she had been looking forward to. She could just hear the thin squeak of a bat somewhere overhead, and it was the half-light when you sometimes saw owls swooping across the sky. Lovely. In summer, you heard the dry chirrup of grasshoppers and crickets.
Father was talking about her afternoon as if it had been a ten-mile marathon for heaven’s sake, and berating himself for not having driven the car up to the Abbey. Moira had felt uncomfortable about the breast-brushing part earlier, but now she began to feel angry.
Without the least warning, as much a part of the night as the bats and the owls, thin clear music drifted across the air, weaving itself into the magical twilight, so gentle and insidious that you could not be entirely sure whether you were imagining it.
At her side, Edward drew in a sharp breath and said he did not know what things were coming to when people were thoughtless enough to fling wide their windows and impose their cacophony on half the countryside. Clearly it was coming from Mallow, and equally clearly it was that insolent young man, Jude Weissman’s grandson, who was playing it. Edward would have a few words to say to Isarel West in the morning.
The music had an odd quality to it. It was not loud but it was difficult to hear anything over it. Moira found it difficult to hear what Father was saying. It was filled with achingly sweet promise and there was a beckoning, mocking quality. It reminded you of all the other worlds that existed – not fantasy, beyond-the-skies worlds, but ordinary ones where people had interesting jobs and friends and travelled and married and had children. The music gave you tantalising glimpses of other lives; like a thickthorn hedge parting for a minute. Like the lovely Bible line about In my Father’s house are many mansions.
And then the music quickened and became sharper, and Moira half turned towards it and stumbled over a tree root, catching her sound foot and tumbling headlong on the ground. She was not in the least hurt – only a sudden jolt to her foot – but she felt silly and undignified in the way you feel silly and undignified if you do not look where you are going and end up flat on the ground.
Edward bent over her at once, saying she must not move, they would fetch help, putting his arms round her and smothering her against his tweed coat, making it difficult for her to breathe.
This was all ridiculous. Moira said firmly, ‘I’m not in the least hurt – except I’ve ruined a new pair of tights,’ but Edward was not having this. A terrible thing had happened to his Moire Silk, his dear one, but her daddy would get her home. They were near to the house anyway and she should be carried – no, he insisted. He put his right arm about her body and bent down to slide his left under her thighs and Moira experienced a jolt of repulsion.
She struggled to get out of his grasp and stand up. ‘Father, please—I’m not hurt and I’d really much rather walk home.’ It would not do any good: he would tell her that Father knew best, and wave aside her protests and in the end she would give in.
Letting the thickthorn hedge close again and letting the doors to all those mansions close . . .
He was hugging her against him; one hand was imprisoning her waist and there was the hot press of masculinity. Moira struggled to get free and as she did so, the music pouring out from Mallow swooped and spun all about them, and there was a moment – dreadful! sick-making! – when she was jammed up against Edward’s groin and he was thrusting forward in horrid, rhythmic movements and Moira could feel the hard lump of flesh between his thighs and a sudden radiating heat. Revulsion scudded across her skin again.
Without warning, the music stopped, as if the musician had flung it away impatiently, and Edward stepped back, putting up a hand to his forehead as if suddenly dizzy or confused.
They went down to the house in uncomfortable silence.
It was pointless to argue against his ministrations once they were home: Moira did not bother to try, even though it was completely ridiculous to be carried up to her room and laid on the bed. The odd, confused look had vanished from Father’s eyes; his face was jowly with possessiveness and he was calling for aspirin and hot milk, elbowing Mother out of the way, making a ridiculous fuss about a small fall. He patted pillows into place and drew the curtains completely instead of leaving the gap which let the moonlight shine on to the end of the bed.
‘A light supper, I think,’ he said, standing up and frowning down at the bed. ‘A little fish perhaps, or an omelette.’
Mary said, ‘We’d shepherds pie tonight—’ and Moira started to say that would be great, because she was actually very hungry after her afternoon’s work. Mother made a good shepherds pie, with the mashed potatoes crisp and brown on top of the minced lamb.
‘Fish cooked in milk,’ said Edward firmly, waving away the suggestion that fish would smell out the bedroom for twenty-four hours. ‘Perhaps a little stewed fruit to follow. A thimbleful of brandy in warm milk afterwards. I shall sit with you while you have your supper.’
Mother had switched on the little bedside lamp after taking away the supper trays, and it cast a soft pool of light over the pillows. There was a bowl of dried lavender on the little bureau under the window, and a faint breeze from outside stirred it, taking away the fish smell. Nice, thought Moira, drowsy from the unaccustomed brandy. Mother made the dried lavender from the bush outside the dining room window and sewed it into little cotton sachets for tucking into dressing table drawers. Poor Mother, who led such a boring life. Poor Moira who will lead a similar one if I’m not careful. Push back the thickthorn hedge, thought Moira hazily. Is there any way I could do that? And what about that really dreadful moment outside Mallow? Will he do that again? And what on earth do I do if he does?
You did not, of course, fall asleep at this time in the evening – it could not be much later than half past eight or nine o’clock – but the unaccustomed brandy coupled with the aspirin, made her feel sleepy. Father had tiptoed out of the room after fluffing up the pillows and adjusting everything in the room that could be adjusted. Irritating. Moira closed her eyes and waited for him to go and after what seemed a very long time, she heard the door of her room open and close again. Good.
She closed her eyes and sank in a comfortable half-dream, the kind of drifting daydream where you floated drowsily beneath warm sun-dappled beech trees and where you were not quite awake, but not so much asleep that you could not direct the dream. The thin sweet sound of the monks’ Vespers’ bell drifted across her dreaming. It was a pity she had not seen Ciaran this afternoon. Ciaran . . .
How might it have been if it had been Ciaran with her when she fell? How would it feel to be picked up and carried by him? Moira turned on to her back, smiling, feeling his arms, imagining him bending over her, brushing her cheek with his lips . . . He was an odd example of celibacy. He never looked at women with any kind of sexual edge, but Moira had often received an impression of some immensely strong emotion being banked down. She thought he had probably known a great many women before he became a monk.
It was very wrong to wish that that strong self-control would give way in her company, but it was immensely exciting to imagine it. He would be gentle and strong and his hands would fold back her nightgown and slide over her naked body, cupping her breasts, and then going lower. Even when you were drifting through a misty green-and-gold world of half-sleep it was possible to feel it all very clearly indeed. Moira could feel her breasts tingling with delight. She could feel the sudden startling intrusion of a hand between her thighs, of a thick warm masculine finger stroking her . . . Someone was breathing harshly with pleasure. Someone was bending over her . . .
The half-guilty pleasure vanished abruptly and Moira was aware that something very frightening was hovering about her. Panic flooded her mind and alarm bells pounded against her senses. Wake up. Wake up before the half-dream crosses over into a nightmare.
Moira opened her eyes and looked up into the hot eyes of the man leaving over her. Not Ciaran. Oh God, not Ciaran. Not the celibate monk about whom she had sometimes fantasised.
Her nightgown was drawn up to her shoulders and her father was standing over her with a look of concentration on his face. One hand was stroking her naked body, pushing between her legs.
The other hand was fumbling inside his unzipped trousers.
The horror and the revulsion she had felt earlier, outside Mallow, swept over her, so that it seemed as if the little lavender-scented bedroom was filling up with it.
And I shall drown, I shall drown in the smothering lavender nightmare, I shall suffocate . . .
Moira clutched at sanity. Edward had gone from the room – it was impossible to think of him as Father any longer – he had gone stumblingly, clutching a hand to his groin, oh God, unbearable! – his face averted.
Moira wrenched her pillows into place and switched on the bedside lamp. Light. Yes, that was better. You could think better with light, you could feel more normal. She hugged the covers around her for warmth and comfort and forced herself to think.
The idea of running away, of escaping the stifling protectiveness, the looming boredom of the years ahead, had tugged at the edges of her mind for a very long time. Now it bubbled up and boiled over, swamping her in a huge, fizzy froth. Could it be done? How could it be done? Money in the post office, a dark night to creep out into . . . It was like seeing a crack appear in the skies that was only a thin sliver of light at present, but that you could, if you had sufficient courage, force open so that you could climb through into the shining worlds beyond.
Yes, but could she do it? Leave Mother and the twins, leave Curran Glen which was the only place she had ever known in all her nineteen years and a bit? Even thinking about it made her feel sick and cold inside, but behind the sick and the cold feeling her mind was already considering practicalities.
Could she walk to the railway station a mile or so beyond the town and get on the first train that came along? Into the unknown . . . Yes, but climbing through into those beckoning worlds. Setting foot at last on the path that widened as it went, and the path that wound excitingly past all those mansions with their doors to the other worlds half open . . . I’ll do it, thought Moira, and the shining, fizzing champagne fountain cascaded over her mind again, sprinkling it with delight, sweeping aside the guilt about leaving Mother and the twins. They would be all right. She would write to them as soon as she could, telling them that she was fine, not telling them where she was, but reassuring them. Maybe later on, the twins could come to stay with her. Extravagant visions of having her own little flat – well, maybe a nice bedsitter at first – rose up. Dublin University might even be a possibility, still. Did you have to have parental permission?
She had known since she was approximately fourteen that she would run away one day; the only thing she had not been sure of was when it would happen.
Now she did know. She had known the minute she opened her eyes and saw him with lust making his eyes bloodshot and with his left hand plucking rhythmically at his groin.
She was going tonight.