The Mock Auction

The bloom of summer was on Miss Lomas. She was as plump as a goose. She had put on weight in her years at Brook Farm and took a large fitting now in skirts and blouses. Gone, long was the time she could struggle into the costume she had worn on the day she accepted the invitation of the Garret brothers to preside over the fine old house which would otherwise have been a liability to them. They had bought the property solely for the sake of the land. To have allowed the large beautifully proportioned house to go to rack and ruin just because the farm was to be an out-farm, would have been outrageous.

It was a matter of luck for all concerned that Miss Lomas had been on hand to run it in a befitting manner.

The costume Miss Lomas had worn the day she first went up the graceful flight of steps to the hall-door of Brook Lodge was still as good as new, stowed away in the hinterland of her clothes closet along with other costumes and coats of that bygone time. She kept plenty of moth balls in the pockets of those once modish garments but the garments themselves only saw the light of day once a year when she took them out, gave them a shake and hung them by an open window for an airing. Occasionally the garments at the back like a crowd at a football match, had pushed forward those in front, and it was difficult to shut the closet door. Miss Lomas had to bump it shut with her ample bottom.

Ought she to have given those old clothes away to someone needy, someone less fortunate than herself? This question sometimes crossed her mind. But to whom would she give them? In order to preserve the sort of privacy proper to a place like Brook Farm she had from the start kept the neighbours resolutely at arm’s length. And in the succession of young servant girls the brothers were always hiring to give her a hand, there had not been one who would have appreciated the quality of such clothes, neither the superior fabric nor the elegant cut. Anyway the bulging closet was in tune with all else at Brook Farm, where plenty was the order of the day. Indeed what might appear plenty to some men would have been frugality to the Garret brothers. Jokingly Miss Lomas used to say there was as much left on their plates after they had eaten their fill than would have satisfied other men to have set before them when they took up their knives and forks to attack a meal. As for herself, she wasn’t slow in acquiring the same breadth and scope as her patrons. She regarded herself as one of the family and daily thanked her lucky stars that she had not let herself be persuaded by so-called wellwishers that her financial arrangement with the brothers was too free and easy. She knew what she was doing. She was more than content with her position. No salary however generous would have allowed for her spending so lavishly on herself as she was at liberty to do if she wished every Saturday night, when, in the Garretstown trap, she went to town to pay the week’s bills and order supplies for the week ahead. In town after she had settled the Brook Farm bills, taking out the fat wad of notes that Joss Garret, the older brother, had stuffed into her hand before she set out, she paid each bill, painstakingly and slowly peeling off note after note as if it was hard to get it to come away from the wad as the rind from a thin skinned lemon. There would have been lashings over to pay for a box of face powder or a bar of perfumed soap or some such little fal-de-la. She did not feel such purchases could be strictly regarded as household expenditure, although the cost would have been a drop in the ocean of the considerably large amount of change she attempted to hand back to Joss the following Monday morning at the beginning of her first full week in her new employment. But Joss, who was the most generous of men, awkwardly pushed the proffered money back into her hand. He was downright embarrassed. ‘Keep it, Miss Lomas! Keep it!’ He muttered. ‘You might need it during the week. One never knows what expenses may crop up unexpectedly and I sincerely hope you did not deny yourself anything you needed.’ Although a bachelor, (due no doubt to the frailty of his sister, Joss had an ornate understanding of women) so with a delicacy equal to his own, Miss Lomas did not press the point, or upset him by ever raising it again.

Of course when she got to know the brothers better, she saw the common sense behind the words of Joss. For, what with replacements of crockery, cooking utensils and household linen, to say nothing of replenishments of food and cleaning materials for the huge store cupboards there was always good use to which the money could be put. Every single bit of that money was ploughed back into Brook Farm, even taking full account of the trifling odds and ends she began to buy herself when the brothers had made it abundantly clear that this was part and parcel of her deal with them. She soon saw for herself that it would not have been in the best interests of the property that she herself look less than her best. Was it not because of how she graced the top of the dining room table as well as being answerable for the provender upon it that she had been invited to reside in the dear old house in the first place? The truth of this was brought home to her when remarkably soon after she had become established there an unexpected development took place. She was exceedingly gratified by it and she saw at once it would be both gainful and pleasurable to all concerned. She was quite struck by how quickly the brothers saw that Brook Farm would be an eminently suitable place to fulfil their occasional obligations to entertain the big cattle men and jobbers, with whom they did business, without putting undue strain, as hitherto, upon the household at Garretstown House, which although it was presided over efficiently and elegantly by Miss Garret put a costly price on that poor lady’s health and nerves since she was virtually a semi-invalid. The new plan was put into action at once. In no time at all Miss Lomas had made Brook Farm a homelier and happier place than Garretstown House had ever been, a smaller, but, in her opinion a nicer house. The modest garden that lay between it and the road was full of trouble-free secluded bowers, and far prettier, she thought, than the large formal grounds that surrounded the larger property. Taking all with all Brook Farm was an ideal place to bring warm-hearted cattlemen back for a meal at the end of a long tiring fair day.

The only pity was that Joss and George themselves could not more often eat there, or indeed live permanently there because in spite of their money they were men of simple ways who went about the countryside buying and selling their own stock like plain farmers. Needless to say they were infinitely larger minded than ordinary farmers and certainly did not make a display of their wealth, but one had only to look at their sister to see the stock from which they had been bred. Just to consider the paper-thin soles of Miss Garret’s shoes was to know that never in her life had she stepped into a pad of cow dung.

Not that Miss Lomas herself was one for traipsing through fields. She got a good grasp of all that she was required to know about farming from the account books and the farm correspondence which she in the main handled. And of course she learned a lot by listening to the talk at table whenever she put up a lunch for a vet or a land inspector, or on the even happier days when the brothers themselves arranged to eat with her if they were shearing sheep or dosing cattle, it being obviously more sensible for them to remain at Brook Farm for their mid-day meal rather than lose precious time going back and forth between it and the big place.

There was nothing Miss Lomas liked better than getting up a decent meal for men capable of appreciating it. Hearty food for hearty eaters was her motto. After warning the men that the plates were mad hot, although never as in lesser establishments disfigured by oven marks, she would ladle out huge helpings of prime beef cooked to a nicety and plentifully doused with gravy from rich pan-liquor. She would eagerly grasp her own knife and fork and eat up with as much gusto and relish as any man.

When the meal was over and the room still reeked traditionally of whiskey and tobacco, Miss Lomas made a point of taking leave of the company to go down to the kitchen and personally supervise the making of the coffee. Unfailingly Joss would spring up to pull out her chair, and invariably he would pay her a nicely phrased compliment. ‘Where would we be without you, Miss Lomas. You are the heart of Brook Farm.’

‘Ah, but where would I be without Brook Farm?’ she would invariably reply.

Then as George chimed in with generous words of his own, echoed by the guest if any, Miss Lomas would let the beam of her smile sweep over the table, stopping short only at Christy.

Who was Christy?

Christy was the fly in the ointment at Brook Farm. He was a partial orphan, the son of an older sister of the Garrets who had died in childbirth soon after having married unsuitably, unhappily, and also unhealthily to judge by Christy’s looks.

Poor Christy had a yellow face, weedy yellow hair and even the whites of his eyes were yellow. Miss Lomas could not stand the sight of him. It was a thorn in her flesh that he was sometimes taken to be a relative of hers. ‘Don’t class me with that fellow,’ she would say quite crisply for one of her soft nature. Nor did she hesitate to freely voice her opinion to Joss that it had been a mistake for the Garrets to take Christy to live with them at all. He would have been far better left with his father’s people whom he took after in more ways than one. Christy had profited nothing by being reared from birth at Garretstown, and when Brook Farm was bought and it was arranged that he would sleep there to keep her company, Miss Lomas would frankly have preferred a dog.

There was no blood bond between Miss Lomas and any of the Garrets, none whatever. Some vague connection may have existed going back to a distant marriage, but it fell far short of a bond of blood. And from the shadow of charity that hung over Christy Miss Lomas was careful to stand well clear.

The Garrets were obligated to her, not she to them. Furthermore, since at times several days might lapse without the brothers setting foot in Brook Farm at all, Miss Lomas, in their absence was regarded by the local people in the light of its Regent. Time was, when it was thought she might one day be its Queen, but if such a notion had ever entered her own head, she had promptly put it to rout. It would not have been proper for her to be residing there at all if there had been any element of that sort in her relationship with the brothers. As things were, they always made sure to be out of her house by nightfall, unless a jobber from Scotland or Northern Ireland had to be given a bed, on which occasions, such was their sense of decorum, the brothers would request her to make up a bed for one or other of themselves as well, to make sure the proprieties were safeguarded. Not that anyone would have found the smallest cause for scandal in her being alone in the house with any of the cattle dealers who came there. They were Nature’s gentlemen to the core. Most of them were married men, with whose wives Miss Lomas had been made acquainted by proxy, and to whom from time to time she despatched little gifts of handmade crochet, soda bread or country butter. It could almost have been said of the Garrets, herself and the cattlemen that they were one large happy family. It would have been hard to untangle the debts and counter-debts, that over the years had grafted them together. Miss Lomas was truly part and parcel of Brook Farm.

‘And when my day is done I will not be taken far away from here,’ she frequently said, looking out of the window towards where, beyond a thin belt of fir trees that separated it from Brook Farm, an old over-grown cemetery could be glimpsed.

Once or twice it had occurred to Miss Lomas that she ought to ask the brothers to buy a plot for her in that cemetery, knowing they would never refuse her anything. But sensitivity held her back. Being Protestants, the Garrets themselves could not be buried in that little cemetery. Unfortunately however Christy was fully entitled to this privilege, for, among the many other mistakes his mother had made, she had married a Catholic. To fortify herself against the unpleasant thought of being buried within the same acre as him, Miss Lomas nourished the hope that the miserable fellow might yet take himself off out of their lives before he had need of a grave, sickly and all he looked. In spite of his spinelessness he would hardly put up forever with the humiliations that were heaped on him by his uncles in their disappointment at how he had turned out. Failing his departure however Miss Lomas consoled herself by thinking that sickly or not, he would, most likely on account of his youth, outlive her, and her bones would have returned to dust by the time he’d join her. For surely she’d be the first of all of them to go, even before poor Miss Garret because as everyone knows invalids hang on like burrs to life. It was therefore a great shock to Miss Lomas, one fine day when Christy ran in from the yard where they were sculling cattle to say that Joss Garret had dropped down dead on the cobblestones. ‘He died without making a will too,’ Christy panted. But Miss Lomas was naturally only concerned with getting down to the yard.

In the yard however arrangements were already underway for the body to be brought back to Garretstown. Somehow or other in her grief and confusion Miss Lomas had assumed that Joss would be carried in to Brook Farm. She couldn’t help thinking how much better she’d lay him out than would be done up at the other place, for all its grandeur. But she stifled this unworthy thought and hurried to ready herself for going over to Garretstown, where she knew she’d be needed. She had already given orders for the Garretstown trap to be sent to fetch her.

Arriving at Garretstown, Miss Lomas found, as she expected, that she had no time to think of anything other than planning the enormous quantities of food and drink that the sad occasion would demand. It was not until late in the day that she got an opportunity of a private word with George. To her surprise, like Christy’ George’s first words too were about wills and testaments. Unlike Christy of course George only intended to reassure her about her position, a reassurance she herself had never for a moment deemed necessary.

‘You see, Miss Lomas,’ George explained, ‘up to the time we bought Brook Farm, our entire estate was held in a family trust and because my brother and I were always so close to each other, our personal monies were in a joint account. It is therefore only with regard to Brook Farm that there could be any difficulty because for some reason of convenience at the time of the sale, the precise nature of which I forget, it was not important, Brook Farm was bought by Joss in his own name and we never got around to remedying the matter. It was very careless, but these things happen. Unfortunately, since Joss died intestate, the place will have to be sold.’ When, at this, Miss Lomas started violently, George held up his hand and begged to be allowed to continue. ‘I will, of course, be the buyer. I will buy into the family estate by private treaty. There is no cause for concern. Things will go on as before, except for the sorrow of our loss.’ He stood up. ‘There will be no change, Miss Lomas.’

Joss was laid out in one of the upstairs rooms at Garretstown House and people thronged the stairs all the next day and late into the night on the eve of the funeral. Miss Lomas was up to her eyes catering for them. On the day of the funeral however she could not suppress a feeling of anxiety, which arose in her when she saw the large mob of Christy’s relatives on his father’s side, who felt free to call to Garretstown and who had the effrontery to push into the dining room and eat and drink their fill of what she had thought she was providing for a select company. Although she herself was rushing frantically backwards and forwards seeing that empty meat platters were replaced by full ones, and glasses kept topped up, it did not escape her notice that the undesirables stuck very close together, their heads in a bunch. They were hatching trouble. She felt sure of it. And she wondered how George kept his equanimity.

As for Christy himself, he was a new man, all energy, all life. Once as she passed him he spared her a word. ‘They say George can’t buy back the farm, except by public auction,’ he said. A nerve in his left cheek was jumping as if for joy.

Although her own head was throbbing, Miss Lomas gave him a piece of her mind. ‘What kind of a gom are you?’ She said. ‘You’re like a man in one end of a sinking ship laughing at those in the other end.’

Yet, before she left for Brook Farm in the early hours of the morning, she sought out George. She found him graver than before but still calm and collected.

‘Be so kind as to step into my study for a moment, Miss Lomas,’ he said, escorting her to a chair and sitting down patiently beside her. ‘I have to tell you that since I last spoke to you, I have learned that nothing can save Brook Farm from going under the auctioneer’s hammer.’ Seeing her begin to tremble, he took her hand and pressed it. ‘Not because of local pressure, mind you, that is only ignorant gossip. It will have to be auctioned because of the covetous curs you saw here tonight, those relatives of Christy’s. Those curs did not come to pay their respects to my poor brother, they were here to see what gain might come to them from his sudden death. They weren’t slow to find out my intention of buying the place by private treaty, and knowing that Christy would be entitled to a cut of the purchase money, they put him up to demanding his cut in cash instead of adhering to my advice that, as one of the family, he be a party to a plan I had outlined to him. By this plan he would have to allow his share, like mine and that of my sister, be reabsorbed into the estate, a plan, which as you can imagine, would be vastly to his ultimate advantage. It would of course be a long-term policy, but for a half-wit like him that’s the only kind of policy I could advise. However if a fistful of money was what he wanted, I would have been prepared to give it to him. But do you think those curs were satisfied? Not them! If you please they did not trust me to put a fair price on the place. It’s them who are insisting on an auction. I wouldn’t put it past them to rig the bidding.’

‘But how will they gain by an auction?’ Miss Lomas couldn’t help interrupting.

George gave a mirthless smile. ‘Because in an open market the whole thing would have to be a cash transaction, and it was the cash they had their eye on. They knew their Christy. Did you never hear that a fool and his fortune are soon parted? If Christy got his share in coin, they knew they could count on getting their hands on most of it. That’s the principle behind their conniving. I hear they are already trying to persuade the poor fellow to go back and live with them.’ At thought of the like happening, George threw his eyes up to heaven, although Miss Lomas, if left to herself, would have seen nothing wrong with any proposal that would take Christy out of her hair. Her hopes in this respect however were quickly quenched. ‘Ah, but I’m able for curs like that,’ George’s voice rose so high that Miss Lomas glanced anxiously at the door to make sure it was shut. ‘They won’t get away with that. Christy will not leave Brook Farm. As for his relatives, they’ll soon be scuttling back to their kennels. You see, I’ve just had a word with Parr.’

‘Mr Parr?’ At mention of the solicitor’s name, Miss Lomas let out a long pent-up breath. She knew Mr Parr well. Brook Farm would be safe in his hands. Many a meal the solicitor had eaten there. He was a fox if ever there was one but very civil, and fox or no fox, he never left the house without remarking on how well she kept things. On his last visit, indeed, he had been extraordinarily warm and natural for a man of his profession. He stayed talking to her in the front hall, not heeding that Joss and George, who had had his trap brought round, were waiting to see him out the gate. He persisted in telling her all about a sister of his whose husband had just died leaving no money and a large family. He even took out his wallet and showed her a photograph of the children. ‘They are fortunate children, Mr Parr,’ she’d said that day with genuine fervour. ‘They will be safe in your hands.’

And so, too, would Brook Farm.

That conversation was some time ago of course and Miss Lomas called her wandering thoughts to order because George was still trying to explain the present situation to her. ‘Tell me, Miss Lomas, did you ever hear of a mock auction? You didn’t? Well, that’s what’s going to be held at Brook Farm. Let me briefly explain Parr’s plan. The house and lands will be put up for public sale alright, and the sale announced on bill boards pasted to every telephone pole in the country, as well as publicised by notices in the columns of the national as well as the provincial newspapers. Then on the day of the sale, the place will be knocked down to the highest bidder.’

Miss Lomas had been perplexed from the start, but now her perplexity would have reached alarming proportions if she had not detected a playful glint in George’s eye. ‘And do you know, Miss Lomas, who the highest bidder will be?’ he asked. ‘You don’t. Well I’ll tell you. It will be Christy, no less!’ Now George was laughing openly at her confusion, but his kindliness prevailed over his amusement. ‘No need to be alarmed. Parr has everything in hand. He has arranged that I will go guarantee for Christy so he can borrow the purchase money from the bank, but only on condition that immediately after the sale he signs a mortgage for as near as no matter to the same amount as the Loan. Do you follow? In this way, he won’t lay hands on a penny piece. He will be the nominal, but I will be the virtual owner of the place. Then, when his false friends slink away, after letting a little time pass, I will persuade him to sell back to me, this time by private treaty and at a fair price.’ In spite of his undoubted grief for the death of his brother, Miss Lomas saw George’s eyes light up with triumph at the manner in which he would beat his enemies. Not that Christy was an enemy. On the contrary, George proceeded there and then to explain that Christy would fare far and away better under Parr’s plan.

‘He will of course get paid a certain amount of cash, but Parr has thought up an arrangement by which he cannot squander it. To tell you the truth I have sometimes wondered if I tried hard enough to guide the poor young devil in the right path. I felt I would be wasting my time. But after we’ve handled this tricky situation, I’m going to make it my business, henceforth to try to steer him in the right direction. I’ll see to it that he cuts off all connection with the other side of his family at least until he sells the place back to me. If I can persuade him to keep the transaction quiet, and clear out of the country altogether, take himself off to Canada or Australia and make a new start, I might raise the price I’d give him. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to feel I might be making a man of him after all. If he does well wherever he goes, it would be an interest for me to follow his progress. I might even think of making a voyage out to see him sometime. Those foreign places get a lot of the sun. And then, of course, in the natural order of things, when the last of us dies he will be entitled to the whole property. It’s not a bad proposition for a lout like him.’ But here, to the distress of Miss Lomas, George seemed to lose his pleasure in the plan. ‘Not that in my opinion, there will be a lot left when that day dawns. My sister, in spite of her weak constitution, may live as long as Methuselah. There’s no one like an invalid for dragging out life to the bitter end, and draining away family resources however abundant.’ He stood up to go.

Miss Lomas, as always had to acknowledge the wisdom of his words, but she had one question she had to put to him. ‘Will Christy agree to all this? That’s the problem as I see it,’ she said.

‘I don’t know,’ said George simply and sincerely. ‘Parr seems confident that if we butter the fellow up enough the notion of being a big landowner will ensure that he will agree to anything. Parr is also going to give him a few words of advice about keeping clear of his father’s people once he’s a man of property.’ Here George went to the door. He looked very tired but Miss Lomas was touched to see he still had thought for her. ‘Rest assured everything will continue as before. I will continue to graze the land as hitherto, and of course, be responsible for the expenses of running the house.’

Miss Lomas made a valiant effort to appear happy but she still had a niggling worry. ‘If Christy agrees to this plan, how long will it be before you buy the place back from him?’ She had dire misgivings at the thought of being dependent on Christy for even the shortest of time.

George laughed. ‘About a few weeks,’ he said offhandedly, and then, although he had opened the door, he shut it again. ‘I forgot to tell you the most important part of the plan,’ he said. ‘You must forgive me but the fatigue of the last few hours is taking a toll of me. The main reason I brought you in here, in the first place, apart from its always being a pleasure to see you, was to tell you that a bit of penmanship will be demanded of you too, dear lady, in connection with this tiresome business. On the evening of the sale and after the signing of the mortgage, I will be presenting Christy with an account on behalf of the Garretstown estate, for a number of items for which the estate has been out of pocket going back to the day poor Joss bought Brook Farm, or at least for as far back as is allowable under the law of statutory declaration. The total of our outlay will be chargeable to the new buyer, and he will have to accept legal liability for that sum in the eyes of the law.’ All at once George sat down again. ‘Poor Christy. I could almost pity him,’ he said. Miss Lomas too, felt a sudden softness towards the fellow, but George had once more risen and gone to the door. ‘You understand the part you have to play in this, I hope?’ He said quietly. ‘You must see to it that all the indoor expenses of Brook Farm over the past years, will be drawn up in ledger form. And I expect the total to come to a nice tot. Do you get me?’ Seeing that she had only dimly got the drift of things he came back up the room. ‘Don’t worry. I will get Parr to explain to you. Parr will make everything as clear as daylight.’

Yet a few days later when Mr Parr called to Brook Farm and had a long talk with her, Miss Lomas was still muddled in her mind. She kept asking question after question. In the end, Mr Parr threw up his hands in near despair.

‘Miss Lomas, you are far too conscientious. There is no need to be so exact. All that really matters is that you come up with a final figure which, while not necessarily larger than the amount expended over the years, will at least not be smaller. Keep in mind the possible value I have put on this place, which I will tell you in confidence later, and aim at producing a figure which will approximate to the difference between that value and the amount of the mortgage we’ll be getting Christy to sign with which I will also see you are acquainted. You’ll have to make a guess at some of your figures but make a good guess. Then he, who was always so formal, winked at her. ‘Don’t forget it’s a Mock Auction,’ he said, and he winked a second time.

It was not however until after she had consulted her cookery books and pondered what she felt to be analogous instances of mock-cream and mock-turtle that Miss Lomas got any real grasp of what might be meant by mock auction. And Christy? Did he know what was afoot, she wondered. He certainly gave no sign of knowing. But then George might not have intended telling him anything until the last minute. The fellow was so used to being ordered around, told to do this and told to do that, to run here and run there, to open gates and shut gates, to chase sheep and count cattle, he’d probably sign on the dotted line without raising a single query. He was however notably more silent than usual. On the other hand, the servant girl of the moment, was full of gab. She could talk of nothing else but the auction. And on the eve of the Big Day when unfortunately Miss Lomas was forced to keep her until late in the night to help pluck and stuff a few extra fowl that she had decided at the last minute might be necessary, she found her downright impertinent.

‘It’s only a mug’s game, being too particular,’ said the slut when Miss Lomas insisted on the pin feathers being singed. ‘There may be the crowd of all times here tomorrow but it won’t be for what they’ll get to eat they’ll be coming.’

Miss Lomas was outraged. ‘Better to be safe than sorry,’ she said, ‘Although I agree that there may be a large crowd of viewers, but there are not many people hereabouts with money enough to bid for Brook Farm.’

‘Isn’t that what I was trying to tell you,’ the girl said. ‘It won’t be only bidders will be here. There’ll be gawkers galore as well.’

Miss Lomas looked in some dismay at the load of food on the kitchen table, but she quickly recovered her calm. ‘If that is so those people won’t be brash enough to come up to the house,’ she said. ‘The auction will be held down in the yard, you know.’ All the same her heart sank. Privately, she too, was coming to the conclusion that there could be a lot of people who’d come out of sheer curiosity. People might guess that George would have a trick card to play, something up his sleeve. She realised suddenly that very few people had come to view the place. That was odd. They had all been strangers to her too, but of course they could have been stooges dredged up in the town by Parr. Certainly few of them had walked the land, or not in earnest, and none of them had asked to inspect the house. Perhaps she had prepared too much food? She belatedly remembered that George had stipulated that only the principals were to receive hospitality. All of a sudden she felt uncertain and out of her depth. So late that night when she was alone in the parlour and George called out to Brook Farm she was exceedingly glad to see him.

‘You’re worrying unduly I tell you,’ he said. ‘What does one duck or one goose too many matter at a time like this? If you are thinking of Christy’s relatives. Those interlopers won’t darken the door, when they discover they’ve been outwitted. Our food would stick in their gullets this time. They’ll be a sorry breed that ever questioned my honesty. That reminds me. Have you anything to add to that list of expenses you gave me? I hope nothing was omitted. If so it can be added in pen and ink. Think hard! Meals for drovers? Did you, for instance, think of that item?

‘The drovers never got more than a bite in the kitchen with the servant girl, a few odds and ends that would otherwise be thrown out,’ Miss Lomas said wearily.

‘No matter!’ said George. ‘Put down a figure for those meals. We have to have entries for everything we can rake up. It is essential that Christy’s immediate profit on the place will be as hollow as a blown egg. I don’t think you’ve caught on to our plan at all.’ It was as near as George had ever gone to being cross with her and Miss Lomas got flustered.

‘Maybe I ought to make out a new list,’ she said although she couldn’t help glancing at the clock.

‘Do so by all means if you think you can improve on the total,’ George said. ‘There’s one point I ought to have stressed, which is that Parr will see to it that you will get away with anything you put down.’ But again, as always, his innate goodness came to the fore. ‘Look here, it’s getting late and I can see you’re tired. Don’t bother with a new list. The first one will serve well enough. But there is one thing I must ask you. Have you given any consideration to the final item, the one you left blank?

Miss Lomas had not forgotten that she’d left a blank. She had done so deliberately. She simply could not believe that George would press her on that sore point. Reaching out to him with her two hands, her eyes appealed to him for understanding of her feelings.

‘No salary I could possibly invent would come anywhere near to equalling what I got out of Brook Farm over all those years,’ she cried. ‘Put down whatever figure you yourself think proper.’

‘Ah,’ said George. ‘Are you sure about that?’ Miss Lomas nodded vigorously. ‘So you did get the idea?’ George said with a quizzical smile. He was touched. ‘Tell me, Miss Lomas, when you were a child, did you ever play a game, a game that began by asking the other player to think of a number and then …’

‘Then double it?’ Miss Lomas asked timidly.

‘Yes, Yes and add 5,’ George prompted.

‘And then double that again?’ Miss Lomas had got the hang of it.

George was so pleased he slapped his thigh the way he did when he’d tell her he’d bought a herd of cattle for next to nothing.

‘You’ve got the idea, alright,’ he said. Then producing her original list from his pocket, now neatly typed, he scribbled a figure in the blank space. ‘Sign this,’ he said handing the list to her. ‘And just in case the solicitors on the other side should be foolish enough to contest it, you might as well put your initials at the end of each page.’

Partly in embarrassment and partly in jollity, Miss Lomas half-averted her eyes as she complied. She was about to hand it back to him when George put his finger on one particular line. ‘Just initial that item he added casually.’

With a flourish Miss Lomas put her initial everywhere George told her, but again took care not to look at the figure entered as her supposed salary. She didn’t expect George to notice her squeamishness but she was pleased to see he was aware of it.

‘You are worth your weight in gold, Miss Lomas,’ he said solemnly. ‘You have taken good care of Brook Farm all through the years. God grant it will take care of you too, to the end.’

Miss Lomas felt like kissing his hand.

*

Next day, on the spur of the moment, Miss Lomas decided not to show herself in the yard at all.

‘It was a great mistake to hold the auction here at all,’ she said to the servant girl. ‘It should have been held at Garretstown House, or better still in the auctioneer’s office.’ It upset her to see people streaming in the gate and slouching around the yard. It was also extremely difficult to keep the servant girl from running in and out between the house and the yard.

By eleven o’clock a tidy knot of people had gathered around the farm cart on which the auctioneer would stand when he proceeded to dispose of the farm. This casual group was disposed to be talkative, until shortly before noon a silence fell when there was a stir in the crowd and Miss Lomas saw that Christy had arrived back, accompanied by a mob of relatives. But when the auctioneer, who arrived almost at the same time, took up his stand on the cart, to her relief she saw that at a sign from George, Christy broke away from his companions and took up his stand in front of the cart. She breathed a great sigh of relief. She concluded that all would be well. Then a new annoyance presented itself. The servant girl had escaped her again and, most unsuitably, wormed her way through the crowd to Christy’s side. There was no calling her back.

On the stroke of noon the auctioneer gave the dash-board of the cart a crack of his stick, and a few people who had been skulking in the sheds and hay barn came sheepishly out. Others, who stayed in the shelter of the outhouses, only craned their necks forward like ganders. Then just as the auctioneer was about to open his mouth, an old clucking hen that was roosting in the haggard flew down into the crowd.

Miss Lomas gasped. Mercifully, the servant girl dived on it, and clapt it up in her apron. How was it Christy hadn’t the wits to do anything about it? She turned back to attend to a few last-minute preparations. If the meal was to be ready on time she herself had better start frying the liver and kidneys that were to embellish the fowl.

It seemed only a minute later that the girl came running back into the kitchen.

‘It’s not over, is it?’ cried Miss Lomas.

‘All but the cheering,’ said the girl with a laugh. Miss Lomas didn’t know what she meant, but she handed over the frying pan.

‘Don’t forget the rule I gave you. Kidney well done, liver less so!’ But her mind was not on the meal. ‘What did you do with that old hen when you were coming in? You didn’t let it go again?’

‘Oh no, miss,’ said the girl. ‘I gave her to Christy to hold.’

To Christy? And of course he took it. A fine figure he’d cut with the old clucking hen under his arm when the auctioneer would call him up to sign the papers. Ah well. Perhaps it would further Parr’s plan to have the fellow shown up for a gom. It would let people see that George Garret was able for all mean-minded connivers. Hearing voices approaching the house, she ran to open the door to them.

There were only three people: George, Mr Parr and Christy. Apparently, the auctioneer and his clerk had been let take themselves off.

‘Well, I’m glad that’s over,’ George said, and he reached for the decanter. ‘We must give this man a drink, Miss Lomas,’ he said, nodding at Parr. ‘He’s not used to being out in the open air.’ He filled out a good stiff drink for himself too. He looked as if he needed it.

‘Well! How did it go?’ Miss Lomas asked anxiously looking from one to the other of them, her glance resting last, but longest on Christy, who had slunk in last. Prompted perhaps by something in Miss Lomas’s face, George too turned around and looked at him.

‘Liven up there Christy,’ he said, and he gave him a clap on the back that nearly jolted the teeth out of his head. ‘You’re a man of property now, the owner of a big farm with nothing to do for the rest of your life only scratch around for the money to pay for it.’ Turning to Parr, he laughed. ‘Well, Parr? We foxed them nicely, didn’t we? Did you see their faces? They never knew Christy here was such a man of substance.’ After he let himself down into the big mahogany carver at the head of the table, he made as if to rise again. ‘Excuse me Christy, it’s you ought to be at the head of the table now,’ he said.

‘Ah, leave him alone!’ said Miss Lomas unexpectedly. ‘There’s no use making any more game of him than is needed.’ She looked at the poor fellow and not for the first time she wondered if there was a ton of him in it at all. It was impossible to know what he thought or felt.

‘By the way, we mustn’t forget to have him sign the mortgage, George,’ said Parr, as if Christy wasn’t present at all.

George paused with a forkful of kidney half-way to his mouth. ‘It wouldn’t do to forget that, would it?’ he said but he laughed. ‘Do you know something. If I was to drop down dead this minute, like my poor brother, Joss, I’d rather see Christy here,’ he pointed at him with his fork, ‘I’d rather see Christy here walking off with the place than have those mangy relatives of his rob him of a penny.’ Abandoning his jocose manner then, he turned solemnly to the solicitor. ‘Weren’t they the fools to stand out against me?’ he said, but before Mr Parr had time to answer, George threw a glance at the clock and snapped his fingers. ‘I nearly forgot. There are cattle coming from Dublin this morning. They were to be at the station before noon. Christy! Quick! Eat up and off with you over the fields. I’ve arranged for a drover to come from Dublin with them, but he’ll need help.’ It was the sort of job Christy always got, but Miss Lomas was surprised at his being given such a menial job today of all days. Christy too seemed stunned at the order. He got to his feet more sluggishly than usual. ‘Don’t forget it’s your own property you’re looking after now!’ George called after him, winking openly at the others.

It was Miss Lomas who remembered the mortgage. ‘He didn’t sign it,’ she cried, and she got to her feet with such haste that her chair over-turned as she ran and banged on the window-pane. Mr Parr too sprang to his feet.

‘Well, well,’ said George, ‘you must both of you have a very poor expectation of my longevity.’ He wasn’t in the least worried.

‘Tut-Tut,’ said Mr Parr. ‘These things are a matter of routine.’

Miss Lomas however had got too much of a fright to be politic.

‘Think of poor Joss,’ she admonished. ‘Think of how quick he went!’

Sobered, George himself stood up. ‘I suppose we’d better get him to sign it.’ Picking up a big cut glass ink stand and a pen, he followed Mr Parr, who was in the hall getting into his overcoat unaided.

‘Are you sure you won’t wait for coffee?’ Miss Lomas asked.

George however was tapping the face of the clock. ‘Is that clock fast?’ he asked, as if she had detained him long enough already. A few minutes later the cob was trotting down between the clipped laurels of the drive and out through the gates on to the road where it was soon hidden by low branches of chestnut and sycamore in young, sweet leaf.

Miss Lomas listened till the last clip-clop of hooves died on the air. She had the oddest notion that there would not be many more big spreads to prepare at Brook Farm. Then she walked down the drive and closed the gates. But as she slammed them shut, and pushed the iron bolt down into the spud-stone, she felt a certain sense of security and as she walked back she looked appraisingly at the old house with its many-paned windows, one to the right being the front window of her own little bedroom, a room that was in fact the largest in the house, but when speaking of it, she used the diminutive from a feeling of homeliness. It was the same feeling of homeliness and love that often made her refer to the whole house as a little treasure.

What a pity the men had to rush away, she thought. This was the time they would pull their chairs over to the fire to let the food settle on their stomachs. Today, since there was no sense in wasting a good fire, she sat herself down in one of the big plush armchairs and in a second she had fallen asleep. She did not wake until tea time when the maid came in, and poked the fire, splashing the fire-light momentarily around the room. ‘Is Christy not back yet?’ she asked, but immediately she regretted having spoken. It was not customary for her to comment on either his goings or his comings. Changes there might be in the days to follow but she was convinced there would be no change in her attitude to him. She affected a light laugh. ‘He must be worn out,’ she said, ‘signing himself into a big farm one minute and signing himself out of it the next!’

‘The one is easier done nor the other,’ the girl said, looking at her slyly. Miss Lomas would have been upset if she had not had manifold experience of the meaningless remarks made by ignorant girls for the sake of hearing their own voices. The one was still particularly talkative. ‘If the Garrets wanted to sell this place tomorrow, they couldn’t do it without asking leave of Christy!’ she said.

‘Nonsense,’ said Miss Lomas. ‘I hope you, and others of your kind, won’t put foolish notions of that kind into the fellow’s head. When he comes back send him in here to me and I’ll put things in their proper light for him.’

*

In the days that followed there was little or no change in Brook Farm. At the end of the week, although he had not once set foot in the house, much less partaken of a meal, George took out his wallet and handed Miss Lomas the same sum of money as always.

As time went on George did of course come to the house quite frequently, but he came only to talk about some small problem that had arisen. He also brought cattle dealers and jobbers to the place, as regularly as before, but now it was never for more than a drink. They were never asked to stay for a meal and never never to stay the night. All in all, life thinned out at Brook Farm. Miss Lomas tried to tell herself that she was getting on in years, and that in a way it was just as well there was less excitement about the place. She persuaded herself that a bit of peace and quiet would almost have been welcome if it were not for Christy, but there was a big difference between silence and surliness. It never ceased to amaze her that he could be so different from his uncles, who had closely resembled each other.

Miss Lomas felt a catch in her heart whenever she saw George; he was so like Joss, the same heavy build, the same hearty red face and the same bloodshot eyes. It never crossed her mind that he might also have the same constitution, until one day, less than two months after the death of Joss, the Garretstown trap came in the gate to the front door, the harness splattered with foam from the mouth of the cob and the yardman that drove it incoherent. He was trying to tell her something about George.

‘Is he dead?’ cried the servant girl who had run out after her.

‘Hold your tongue,’ said Miss Lomas, but she knew from the palpitations she got, that something serious had happened. ‘It could be just a dizzy spell,’ she said to the man and told him to wait while she got her coat. ‘Even if it was a heart attack,’ she pronounced a few minutes later as she was scrambling into the trap, ‘it must have been a mild attack or else he would have been gone at once. Mark my words, he will be all right when he gets a bit of rest. Well? What are we waiting for?’ she asked impatiently, as the man made no move to go.

‘I thought Christy might be coming with us.’

‘Is it him?’ said Miss Lomas scathingly. ‘He’d be the last one I’d want to see if I was ill, and I’m sure his uncle would feel the same.’

‘I only thought …’ the man began when, reaching across him, Miss Lomas whisked the whip out of its socket and gave the mare a flick on her glossy rump. ‘Why do people always look on the gloomy side? Things will be all right, you’ll see,’ she said. Then as the cob broke into a trot, she settled herself more comfortably on the horse-hair cushions. ‘Wonders can be worked nowadays even with the heart,’ she said and it occurred to her, that had she been in the yard when Joss had had the stroke, she might have been able to save him, although they said he was stone dead when he fell. All you had to do was just rub the chest clockwise above the heart. Or was it counter-clockwise? No matter anyway. Joss was dead and gone. And by all accounts, George was not only still alive but the doctor was with him. He would be all right.

Minute by minute as the trap spanked along the road Miss Lomas felt less alarmed. It was odd the way things worked out. Instead of being threatened, it seemed that her authority had increased, because for the time being at least, she would most likely be taking charge at Garretstown House as well as at Brook Farm. Not that she’d fancy sleeping there. She might have to spend a night or two there perhaps – she had brought her night things – but on no account would she stay there indefinitely. For twenty years she had not slept one night away from Brook Farm, and she did not believe she would close an eye any place else in the world. Turning around she looked back fondly at it. ‘Isn’t it a little gem?’ she said to the yardman.

In spite of the sad nature of her ride, Miss Lomas could not help but respond to the beauty of the countryside. She rejoiced to see that already the dog-roses had budded, and when she saw a large, pale blossom that had flattened wide open, she beamed upon it. After that however she closed her eyes because the trap had rolled past the boundary of Brook Farm where the hedges were always as neat and trim as if they were pared with a nail scissors and they were passing between the ragged hedges of neighbouring farms.

The neighbouring farms were an eyesore to Miss Lomas, the gaps in their mearings stopped with dead branches, and between the fields instead of gates discarded bedheads. Oh, how she despised the mean and petty economies by which the local farmers, not having the broadness of the Garrets, eked out their scanty profits. When Garretstown was reached at last, Miss Lomas sat up straighter. ‘Pull up,’ she called out unnecessarily when they reached the hall-door.

All was bedlam at Garretstown. Miss Garret, most unsuitably, sat weeping in the kitchen, weeping noisily. The two maids appeared to be at a loss. They did nothing but run up the stairs and then run down again. It was high time someone took charge. Taking off her hat, Miss Lomas dealt first with Miss Garret. She led her back to the drawing-room, and, as an undertaker might compose a corpse, she composed her. This she did so well, that although Miss Garret still wept, she thereafter did so silently and decorously. Then, Miss Lomas, with maids scampering before and after her, went upstairs.

But at sight of George Garret she gasped. How could such a big man like him have shrunk to nothing in the few short hours since she’d seen him last? Blenched and enfeebled he lay on his bed.

‘George,’ she called urgently. ‘George? It’s me. It’s Miss Lomas.’ But bending closer she could see that for the moment at least he could make no response. ‘How long has he been like this?’ she asked sharply of those at his bedside. Startled she saw that one of them was Parr. He was seated at a table drawn up at the other side of the bed. On the table he had placed a large lamp with the shade off and in front of him he had a sheet of foolscap and a large silver inkpot from the library, and into the inkpot every other minute he dipped his pen, after which, each time he gave the pen a little shake that scattered ink on the floor.

‘Mind there! You’ll destroy the carpet,’ Miss Lomas warned before she took in the purpose of the lawyer’s presence. ‘What are you thinking of?’ she cried then. ‘This man is in no condition to attend to business.’ Mr Parr, however, must have seen a flicker in the eyes of his client, for disregarding her, he called to a gawk of a clerk he had with him, and together they tried to drag George Garret upright, as they might have tried to pull a beast out of a gripe.

‘Stop that!’ Miss Lomas shouted. ‘Can’t you see he must store what small strength he has left in him? Where is the doctor? Does the doctor know about this carry-on?’

Mr Parr gave her a scathing glance.

‘The doctor is gone. There’s a limit to the skill of all men,’ he said. ‘But doesn’t all the world know that any man, sick or well, is the better for knowing his affairs are in order?’

‘But this man’s will is made. It is in my possession, locked in the closet in my room, as you must surely know.’

‘That may be,’ said Mr Parr, ‘but there is one small matter outstanding, Miss Lomas, and if possible it ought to be regularised.’

Miss Lomas hardly waited for him to end his sentence. ‘This is no time for small matters,’ she cried. ‘I suppose you mean money? Money, money, money! You’d think it was the only thing on this earth. Well, let me tell you something! All the money in the world would not be worth one hour of this man’s life! And anyhow, believe me, your purpose may best be served by letting him sleep.’

Mr Parr was not to be patronised.

‘If it is sleep!’ he said. All the same he stabbed the pen into the inkwell, like a labourer sticking his spade into the ground, and he wiped his hands. ‘God knows where you get your optimism,’ he said. ‘In my opinion, he’s as good as gone.’

But if Parr was not to be patronised, Miss Lomas was not to be flustered.

‘All the more reason to leave him in peace,’ she said, ‘Thank God I’ve always been above money.’

‘Your generosity does you credit, Miss Lomas,’ said Mr Parr drily.

‘Don’t forget where I learned it!’ Miss Lomas admonished him as she turned back and looked sadly at her old friend. As she did there was a rattle in his throat that made her whole body go cold. But she kept her head even in her fright. ‘Have Miss Garret brought up at once,’ she said to the maids.

‘Better get Christy too,’ said Mr Parr, ‘and get him fast.’

But Christy was already at hand, standing in the passage outside the sick-room, where a small group of the servants and workmen had gathered.

*

When George Garret breathed his last, a deep silence fell not only within the house but outside too. It seemed as if the fields, and indeed the whole world, had gone silent. The lawyer was the first to make a move. He was deadly tired. His one thought was to get away before commotion set in. Indeed as he went stiffly down the stairs one of the maids ran past him going full tilt, and in the kitchen there was a clatter as someone let fall a pile of plates. He would have to have a talk with Miss Lomas later, but he knew that tonight she’d have her hands full. He had not reached the foot of the stairs however before he heard her call down that she wanted to speak to him.

‘Do you know the first thought that came to my mind when all was over?’ she cried. ‘Only for me Christy would at this moment be the master of Brook Farm.’

Shocked as he was that she could be so down to earth at such a time, Mr Parr was too tired to be cautious.

‘By God, Miss Lomas,’ he cried, ‘I don’t know that you’ve any great reason to congratulate yourself. Christy’s signature on that mortgage only complicates matters. For me, at any rate. Better he were left in full ownership. The Garrets owed the poor devil something. In an estate the size of the Garret estate, one out-farm is a drop in the ocean and I thought that if Christy were to get Brook Farm outright, without being indebted to the bank, he might be amenable to accept it as his full share of the family trust. Now there’s no knowing what will happen.’ He shook his head. He looked dead beat. ‘It’s my guess Christy could be gom enough to try and raise the money to pay back the mortgage. There would be no shortage of people at hand to encourage him in such foolishness. I’m afraid we’ll have to contend again with those ravening relatives of his, only now they’ll be ten times as vicious having been tricked at the Mock Auction.’ Seeing that Miss Lomas had bristled, he opened the door. ‘Well, we can’t worry about it at this moment. Things may sort themselves out,’ he said hoping to fob her off for the time being with a few easy words.

Miss Lomas was not to be fobbed off, though.

‘What were those papers you were trying to get George to sign?’ she asked.

‘What do you think? I was trying to get him to write off the mortgage.’

‘I thought it was money that was in question,’ she said faintly.

Was she a fool? Mr Parr wondered what in the name of God did she think a mortgage was all about if not money? He was in no mood for such imbecility. For her part Miss Lomas was trying to figure out how the mortgage which had been intended to put everything right, would appear now to have landed them in a worse plight. She dimly discerned there could be trouble ahead.

‘But if there was no mortgage on the place, couldn’t he sell it?’ she asked.

‘He could,’ said Mr Parr without blinking, ‘but don’t forget George was too far gone to hear me much less understand what I was trying to get him to do. Poor George!’ Mr Parr shook his head sadly. ‘The truth is, Miss Lomas, I thought George should be given a chance to die without having his shabby treatment of Christy on his conscience.’

‘George was going to buy the place back from Christy when he judged the time to be right,’ Miss Lomas protested.

‘Ah yes,’ said Mr Parr, ‘but unfortunately we are not judges of what time we are allotted for future actions, whether good or bad. That reminds me, Miss Lomas, I have a suggestion to make to you. I think that while you and I can still keep our own slate clean, I suggest we destroy that list of expenses that was drawn up for the running of Brook Farm for the past decade. The document is still in my safe. George did not get round to presenting it to Christy. Perhaps in this matter he was waiting till he judged the time to be fit. But if Christy has to meet that bill too he will be left stripped as bare as a bone. Things might have turned out alright if George had lived, but now there is no one to stock the land and keep the buildings in repair.’

Miss Lomas felt suddenly slightly better than she had for some hours. She had not realised Christy’s position was so bad. ‘Maybe he’ll take himself out of here altogether,’ she suggested hopefully.

‘And where would he go?’ Parr asked sourly. ‘No. It’s my opinion he will hang on here if only by the skin of his teeth.’ Then the old man looked up at the ceiling of the room where the corpse lay and with a disregard for the dead which was very shocking to Miss Lomas, he shook his fist, ‘George Garret would have done well to ascertain the state of his health before he laid plans for beggaring his nephew,’ he said.

Miss Lomas could not let a slur like this be put on her old friend, no longer able to defend himself.

‘The idea was to make a man of Christy,’ she said coldly, ‘to force him to emigrate and start a new life, perhaps in the colonies.’

‘Is that so?’ said Parr sarcastically. ‘Well, I can tell you, Miss Lomas, George did his work altogether too well in every regard. For one thing he puffed poor Christy up with a bogus sense of his own importance and encouraged him to see himself in the light of a big farmer for all that he hadn’t a penny to his name.’

‘Do you really think he’ll hang on at Brook Farm?’ Miss Lomas cried in open disbelief of such a thing being possible.

‘I don’t think it. I know it,’ said Parr. ‘I’ve already had a few words with him. In his own interests I suggested that he ought to start looking around at once for someone to graze the land but he scoffed at the idea.’ Miss Lomas stared at him. She was amazed that Christy had the guts to make a stand against Mr Parr. It crossed her mind that he might have a side to him that she had never seen. She’d want to be careful not to antagonise him too much. Unexpectedly she found herself flying to his defence. ‘Christy was quite right about one thing anyway. Tenants at Brook Farm! The idea was unthinkable.

‘They would only have grazing rights,’ Mr Parr said, making a visible effort to be patient. ‘How else will he get a pennypiece on which to live?’ he asked.

Miss Lomas did not answer for a moment. She was rethinking the whole matter. Could there not be a compromise? After all there were tenants and tenants. Certain tenants could in fact be most acceptable.

‘You, Mr Parr, will, I take it still be continuing to administer the Garret estate, and I suppose you will have to hire a farm manager? Surely you could get him to rent the land here. That ought to be acceptable to Christy. After all the Garrets are his own flesh and blood.’

‘You don’t know Christy, Miss Lomas. He is as stubborn as a mule. And I may tell you that you don’t know me either. I expect of course that I will be looking after the interests of Miss Garret but no way will I tangle with Christy. As a matter of fact that was another disservice George did his nephew. He should not have alienated him from his father’s relatives. Bad and all as they are, they were the only friends the poor devil had in this world, but such as they were they were better than no friends at all. Although there would be no immediate gain to them in the way things turned out, they might have seen it to their advantage in the future to have Christy struggle out of his difficulties. They might have succeeded where I failed and persuade him to sell the land. But they have washed their hands of him since he signed the Mortgage. They feel it was him not George that tricked them.’

Miss Lomas sank down on the step of the stairs.

‘Oh what will happen?’ she whispered.

‘Nothing good. You may be sure of that,’ said Mr Parr. ‘Christy will be in a pretty pickle. I had thought for a moment when I saw him up in that room standing beside the corpse that I might make an effort to get the bank to allow him a second mortgage, a small one, just enough to buy a few beasts and give him a chance – a slim one I admit but still a chance to get on his feet. After all if he can hang on long enough he’ll be heir to what’s left of Garretstown although that won’t be much if the old lady lives much longer. So in the end I decided against doing anything, mainly I may say, in his own best interests. If there was one good thing to be said in favour of George Garret’s behaviour it was that idea he had in the back of his mind about helping Christy to emigrate, but I reluctantly came to the conclusion that there might be only one way to do that now and that is to starve him out. It might be the kindest thing to do under the circumstances.’

To the surprise of the old solicitor Miss Lomas laughed, although it was a mirthless laugh. It was just that this was hardly a plausible plan to put into execution at Brook Farm, where more food went into the pig’s bucket than went into the mouths of many of their neighbours.

‘I’m afraid it would be hard for anyone to starve at Brook Farm,’ she said, but she noticed Mr Parr looked oddly at her.

‘Look here, Miss Lomas, it must be getting on for morning. You’re worn out like myself and no wonder. I’d take forty winks if I were you before you do another thing. I suppose you’ll be staying the night here?’

‘Here? Why should you suppose that?’ Miss Lomas asked.

‘Well, for one thing, there are the funeral arrangements to be made,’ said Mr Parr censoriously. ‘Miss Garret is in no condition to attend to such matters.’ Then when Miss Lomas made no answer, he realised that she was going to let bedlam take care of bedlam.

‘Perhaps I had better put a notice in the newspapers saying that the house and funeral will be private,’ he said. Considering the magnificent way she had coped with the refreshments at Joss Garret’s funeral, he didn’t expect for a moment that she would really let people go away from George’s grave without as much as asking if they had a mouth on them. But Miss Lomas was turning away.

‘Do what you like in the matter. I’m going home,’ she said wearily.

Dawn was coming up over the trees when Miss Lomas climbed stiffly into the trap. The night which had brought the chill of death to George Garret had brought the full softness of summer over the fields he had left behind. And as she drove along the road in the early light, instead of a single dog-rose, there would have been dozens to delight her, but she saw nothing. Worn out, she jolted up and down on the seat of the trap, as blind to their beauty as if she too was boxed up in her coffin. And when the gable end of Brook Farm came in view, a sight which in the past had always given her pleasure, it seemed that the great stone house had suffered a metamorphosis, turned into an abstraction, a cause of dispute.

‘What time will I come back for you, ma’am?’ asked the yard man. His simple words made Miss Lomas uneasy. Having reached Brook Farm she never wanted to stir out of it again, ever. Who knew what might not happen in her absence?

‘They can do without me today,’ she said. ‘I have affairs of my own to concern me,’ she said. The man was surprised but not unduly.

‘I suppose you’ll have a lot to do before leaving,’ he said off-handedly.

Miss Lomas started. ‘What made you think I’d be leaving?’ she asked sharply, but Mr Parr’s words about starving-out Christy came back to her. How could that be done while she was there? Surely Mr Parr didn’t envisage her leaving? The idea was preposterous. Everyone knew her position at Brook Farm. She went into the house. Her mouth was parched for a cup of tea, but it was too early for the servant girl to be in and she didn’t feel fit to wrestle with the kitchen range. Christy would probably be back soon and he’d attend to the range. She had not seen him since those last confused minutes by his uncle’s death-bed. Going upstairs, she lay down on her bed, meaning only to stay there a short time but it was evening when she woke. Christy apparently had not shown up all day.

‘Where can he be?’ she enquired anxiously of the girl.

‘It’s late in the day to start worrying about him,’ said the girl.

Such impudence was staggering. It was all Miss Lomas could do not to give her notice on the spot, but she thought better than to introduce more disorder than that which seemed already to be threatened. She refrained from further enquiries about the fellow. Maybe he had made up to his aunt and got round her to let him stay the night at Garretstown?

Christy however had not stayed the night at Garretstown. This was clear the minute his step was heard on the stairs late that night. He had drink taken. ‘Where were you?’ Miss Lomas demanded. ‘I hope you weren’t foolish enough to be discussing your business with strangers.’

Christy gave her a cold look.

‘My father’s people were as much my own blood as those on the other side. But they’ve been put against me now. I have to look elsewhere for support.’ She looked after him. There was no knowing what hands he’d fall into now.

Miss Lomas didn’t see Christy again until he came into the cemetery the next day and he was accompanied by a couple of scruffy fellows of about his own age. Miss Lomas herself had been brought to the cemetery in the Garretstown trap, but she took care to stand apart from the other mourners. In the absence of Miss Garret, who had been in no condition to attend, Christy had to be considered the chief mourner. Mr Parr was there of course. And there was a small knot of maids and workmen from Garretstown. Miss Lomas deliberately stood at a distance from all, she wanted it clearly understood that she was representing Brook Farm. She felt numb. Even the sight of the glossy coffin did not awaken any emotion in her, other than to compare it unfavourably with the one in which Joss had been laid, for the ordering of which she herself had been responsible. It was not until that other coffin was lifted up as custom demanded, to let the more recent one be put on top, that her heart was stirred, and her own troubles were for a moment forgotten. Both coffins were new and strong. What matter anyway whether a coffin caved in or not? What did anything matter to the dead? The living were more to be pitied than them. All the same, tears came into her eyes. How upset the brothers would be if they could know the annoyance she was being caused. It was with this thought in her head that, after the last sod was thrown down on the two coffins, she made her way over to Mr Parr.

‘I must have a word with you,’ she said urgently.

Mr Parr inclined his head. ‘Can’t it wait a day or two?’ Parr was curt. ‘Normally, I would be reading the Will to Miss Garret after the funeral, but since she’s still in no condition to take it in, I was going to postpone doing so until later in the week. It will give us all more time,’ he added enigmatically.

‘For what?’ said Miss Lomas so loudly Mr Parr looked around uneasily. Then he looked back at her and tried to assume an expression of sympathy.

‘I know it will be a wrench for you to leave Brook Farm, Miss Lomas,’ he said guiltily. It seemed the most tactful way to refer to the inevitable changes that would have to be made.

‘What do you mean? You know that Brook Farm is my home. I’ve invested the best years of my life in it,’ said Miss Lomas, and her voice rose shrilly. ‘I have no other place to go.’

So she was going to be troublesome too? A caustic look came on Parr’s face. ‘If you feel so strongly about it, why don’t you buy the place yourself?’ he said.

‘With what?’ Miss Lomas asked, looking at him as if he was mad.

Parr’s eyes narrowed. He was not sure if she was clever or merely stupid. ‘It was just a manner of speaking,’ he said. ‘I only meant to convey that I knew how highly my clients valued your services. And indeed so well they might. There are not many people who would have given so much over and above what was demanded of them.’

‘Demanded?’

Mr Parr coughed.

‘I know,’ he said slowly, carefully choosing his words. ‘I know too how greatly your services exceeded your remuneration, but you always struck me as a thrifty woman.’

Miss Lomas stared. It was a matter of pride with her that no one knew her business, but never for a moment did she expect that the family solicitor would have been excluded from confidence with regard to her relations with the Garret brothers.

‘You don’t mean to say you thought I was paid?’ she cried, as if he had cast a slur on her. ‘Surely you knew my position in Brook Farm?’ Suddenly panic seized her. Did she know it herself? And more important still, what was her position now? She did not at all like the waspish look on Parr’s face.

‘I may be wrong,’ the solicitor said, although the tone of his voice made such a supposition ridiculous, ‘but I seem to recollect that at the time of the auction there was an item in the list of expenses, an item supplied by you, Miss Lomas, in your handwriting authenticated by your signature, and further to that, initialled on every page, an item which represented a salary, a salary going back over many years, and which, I must add, struck me, even at that time, and in spite of my client’s well-known generosity, to say the least of it, as adequate.’ He coughed. ‘Not to mince matters, it was a remarkably generous salary, Miss Lomas. To tell you the truth, I didn’t think we’d get away with that item. You must have a nice little nest egg stashed away.’ That ought to fix her, he thought.

‘Oh, but you forget,’ said Miss Lomas, and Mr Parr was startled by the simple and artless look on her face. ‘You forget that list was made up for the mock auction. They were mock figures. George worked out what he thought was a suitable figure.’

‘May God forgive him,’ said Mr Parr, and when at that moment Christy passed them going out the gate of the cemetery, heavily escorted by a dubious looking lot of young fellows his own age, the solicitor threw up his hands.

‘Two leeches! Not one!’ he cried. ‘George Garret was not as smart as he thought he was.’ Then controlling himself with difficulty, he put his hand on Miss Lomas’s arm. ‘I can’t believe that you will make trouble, Miss Lomas,’ he said, but when she shook off his hand, he raised his voice. ‘I must warn you, that if you do it will be the duty of the law to take action.’

Miss Lomas looked around nervously to see if they were overheard.

‘I’ll say nothing now, Mr Parr, except that your attitude is very strange. As to the law!’ She drew herself up. ‘Let me tell you it is not the law has the last word in this country. I have my rights and everyone knows that. I tell you plainly here and now that I intend to stand upon those rights.’ The mourners were beginning to leave the cemetery, but many of them were waiting to offer her their sympathy. ‘You see!’ she cried, triumphantly turning her back on him and proceeded gracefully to shake hands with all and sundry.

After a few moments however as she stood in the wet grass receiving the sympathy of the farmers’ wives, whom she knew only slightly, it began to dawn on her that their condolences seemed to be offered less on the death of George, than on her own predicament. Breaking away from them abruptly, she went out of the gate to where the trap was waiting. But on another impulse she ignored the trap and started to walk down the road. It was an aggressive action, and she saw Mr Parr looking after her with his lips drawn together as tight as if they had been sewn up with string, like she herself had always made the servant girl sew up the vent of a chicken to keep the stuffing from falling out.

It was a good thing she had not let the girl come with her to the cemetery, she thought as she walked along the road, because the fresh air made her quite hungry. The girl would have something prepared for her when she’d get home. But the thought of the servant girl was not altogether a happy thought. If there was to be unpleasantness between herself and Parr, who would pay the girl’s wages? Ah well, the girl had a good home at Brook Farm, and that was not something to be ignored. The work ought to be lighter now too. She decided not to worry.

It was some time before Miss Lomas reached Brook Farm and when she got no reply to her knock on the hall door, and had to trudge round the back, it was with surprise she saw that it was Christy who was in the kitchen standing beside the range.

‘How did you get back before me?’ she exclaimed. He had not passed her on the road.

‘There are fields attached to this place as well as a house,’ he snapped back. Miss Lomas agreed to ignore Christy’s bad humour. ‘What are you doing with that filthy teapot?’ she asked. In his hand he had a battered blue enamel teapot used only for handing out tea to casuals in the yard.

But Christy had a true economy with words, making question answer question. ‘Do you want a cup?’ he asked, noisily clapping the lid on the pot. ‘If you do you’d better take it while it’s going. There’s no use waiting for the skivvy to get it for you. She left. She was no fool that one. She saw the writing on the wall.’

‘Nonsense!’ said Miss Lomas. ‘She couldn’t leave without giving notice.’

Christy gave an ugly laugh. ‘There’s no class but has some privileges. Are you going to have a cup of tea or are you not?’

‘Well, if the girl is really gone, we had better eat a proper meal,’ Miss Lomas was about to take the teapot from him but he was already emptying the kettle into it. ‘I’ll have enough to do without washing up odd cups and saucers all day,’ she cried.

‘It’s hardly worth your while making a compliment out of yourself,’ Christy said bitterly. ‘I won’t be here much longer. No one is going to buy a place with a murderous mortgage on it.’

‘Can’t you let the land?’ she asked. But she saw that Mr Parr was right. His relatives had had enough of him. They’d seen there was nothing now to be gained by them. Was he going to quit, walk out of the place and not give it a thought? All along she had wanted to get rid of him, but in the light of Parr’s attitude to herself, his going might be far from the best that could happen. She drew herself up with all the dignity she could command upon a stomach so empty. She’d put guts into him if no one else did. ‘Since when have other people dictated what was to be done at Brook Farm?’ she demanded.

‘Tell that to Parr!’ said Christy crustily.

‘I have already done so,’ said Miss Lomas and she felt she had made some impression on the fellow until he stepped over close to her.

‘It’s a laugh to hear you talking about rights,’ he said. ‘Weren’t you the one that laughed at my rights, in spite of them being down on paper and registered in the Office of Deeds.’ He came closer still. ‘By all I hear, too, there might be no mortgage at all only for you!’ There was an ugly look in his eyes.

The sight of him had always been distasteful to Miss Lomas. She had always thought him a weakling. Perhaps she was wrong about him? Perhaps for all his weediness he could be a bully? And if he was going to leave, he might in his malevolence do her harm before he went. Overcome by fear she had an impulse to run. Only where would she run? Anyway, deep down in her, another fear was growing. If Christy went, she’d be utterly alone, and although the house was only a few yards from the road she had preserved its privacy so well up to now, it might as well have been a vault. Desperately she summoned up a cunning not native to her.

‘Why are you so sure it would have made all that difference whether the mortgage was signed or not?’ she said. ‘This is not a case in law you know, it’s a matter of human decency. You don’t think they can turn you out, do you? Do you imagine for one moment anyone from hereabouts is not going to take your side in a case of clear injustice. What kind of neighbours do you think we have?’

Christy listened, but he shook his head. ‘There are more people in Ireland than the people hereabouts. What about strangers,’ he said. ‘My position will soon be known all over the country and there’ll be some scoundrel ready to take advantage of me.’

Miss Lomas scoffed. ‘How big do you think Ireland is? Don’t you know that where land is in question, Mizen Head is only a stone’s throw from Fair Head! Word will be passed along, you’ll see, and there won’t be a man in the length and breadth of the country will as much as cheat you out of a blade of grass. The Irish are still Christians.’ She saw that her words were sinking into him. ‘Where’s your big talk now about ownership?’ she demanded. ‘Who have you been mixing with these last few days? It’s to me you ought to listen! You’ll be no man if you let Parr drive you out of here. He won’t put me out, I can tell you! And now,’ she cried, trying to affect a lighter tone, ‘we’d better eat something. We’ll need to conserve our strength for what may be ahead.’ Stepping brightly over to the bread-bin she lifted the lid with a flourish. At once her smile faded. ‘There’s no bread,’ she said.

Even Christy was taken aback. He held out the tea-caddy from which he’d made the tea. ‘That was the last of the tea too,’ he said.

Not possible! There had never been any shortage in Brook Farm. Miss Lomas hurried over to the big store press. Except for a few jars of mint-sauce, chutney and cayenne pepper, the shelves were empty. When the girl was going she must have cleared out everything in the press and taken it with her. ‘What will we do?’ she asked, stunned. It was a strange quarter from which to look for help, but surprisingly Christy was resourceful.

‘Well, we can’t live on air,’ he said rooting around in his pockets. Taking out a fistful of small coins he made a careful selection from them. ‘I’ll go to the shop for a loaf of bread and a bit of tea and sugar.’

Miss Lomas looked at him. Survival for both of them depended on solidarity. She’d have to take her chance with him and she was prepared to do so with as much good will as she could summon to her aid, until, at the door, he looked back and fixed her with a cold eye. ‘Can I get anything for you?’ he asked.

‘I’ll get my purse,’ she said hastily. Standing at the window, watching him go out to the yard and take down an old push-bike that hung by its front wheel from a meat-hook in the haggard, she wondered what would she have done without him. There was a trace of manliness in him after all, especially in the way he threw his leg over the bar of the bike, and lowering his head over the handlebars charged down the drive. In spite of the vigour of his pedalling however, the bike soon began to wobble from side to side, and going out the gate, he nearly brought the gate-piers with him. She saw with disgust that he had not taken the trouble to pump the tyres. It was not to be wondered he was a long time away, and that he came back on foot.

‘It’s in the ditch,’ he said, when she asked about the bike.

Counting out her change, Christy took a number of brown paper bags out of his pocket. Miss Lomas hustled over as he put them on the table. Sugar? Butter? Small quantities, but that was what they’d tacitly agreed. And bread? Yes, but why two loaves? They would get stale. But what was this, though? More tea? More butter? Slowly she understood. Going over to the press she got down two canisters, instead of one, two butter dishes and two earthenware jars for the sugar, and started to divide out their rations. She was about to empty a ration of sugar into one of the jars when she saw there was still a bit of sugar in the bottom of the jar. Startled, she looked at Christy for direction. Silently Christy gave it. Diving in his dirty hand he transferred a fistful of it to the other jar. Then with a down-turned thumb he indicated she could go on pouring. Thus was shared out the dregs of the Garret bounty.

Making sure to use a spoon of tea from each caddy, Miss Lomas made a fresh pot of tea, and put the teapot on a tray along with two cups and saucers, ready to be carried into the dining-room, when Christy reached out roughly and took off one cup. Again with a down-turned thumb he indicated that she was to fill it. Miss Lomas looked uncertainly at her own cup. To eat in the kitchen would save steps, and if she didn’t get a cup of tea quick she’d drop. Also, with the servant girl gone there would be no loss of face. She left down the tray and sat herself opposite Christy.

The meal was eaten in a brutal silence. Miss Lomas was so hungry she gulped down the tea and dragged at the thick bread as voraciously as Christy, who always had the manners of a pig. All the same, she was grateful when after he’d finished, he went over to the sink and held his cup under the tap. At least he didn’t expect her to wait on him.

What would he do next, she wondered? Would he be going over to Garretstown? She guessed that if she asked he would not answer, so she made what she could of the fact that when he went out he wore no coat. Through the window, she saw him walking around the yard. From the way he poked his head into one shed after another she thought he was looking for something until he went over to one of the field-gates and leant across it staring down at the grass, she felt that he was probably seeing Brook Farm for the first time.

Looking around her, she felt she herself was certainly seeing the kitchen for the first time. She had never spent much time in it. And this, she now saw, had been a mistake. It was nowhere as clean as she’d always insisted the rest of the house be kept. She rolled up her sleeves.

Miss Lomas spent the best part of the morning looking for things. Where were the scouring brushes kept? Where on earth were the floor­cloths? And in searching for these things such dirt came to light behind presses and on the top shelves of cupboards. She could hardly credit her eyes. When Christy got back late in the day, she had heaped up in the middle of the floor, a clutter of rags, old newspapers, empty cartons, and half-empty sauce bottles, he stood in the doorway and let out an oath.

‘Have you turned the place into a dung-heap already?’ he said, and wheeling around on his heel he went out again.

Tears of humiliation came into Miss Lomas’s eyes. Her head ached. And she was hungry again. Had Christy gone off for the evening? Could he be so spiteful? Perhaps he was gone to buy food for their supper? On the other hand he hadn’t asked her for any money. As the evening wore on and there was no sign of his return, she lost heart. If the hens had not stopped laying, she could have had an egg. Or if there was anyone to wring the neck of one of the old hens she could have put it in a pot. But perhaps it was as well not to do that, since somehow or other in their new partnership she felt that everything out of doors was Christy’s province. She could boil up a pot of potatoes, of course, but she’d have to go out and dig them, and, although her footwear was not as foolish as that of Miss Garret, her shoes weren’t up to the soft trackless loam of the potato patch, and in the end she made do with another cup of tea and a few more cuts of bread.

At twelve o’clock that night when there was still no trace of Christy, Miss Lomas climbed the stairs utterly exhausted. It was near morning when she heard him come in. It would hardly have seemed worth his while going to bed at all except that judging by the way he was stumbling around he’d be safer off his feet than on them. More to contend with. Miss Lomas sighed. Up to this she had not known him to drink hard. Indeed he had not been one to consort with anyone much less with hard drinkers. She listened for a while to him cursing and muttering. Where had he been? Worn out, at last she fell asleep and did not wake until late. The first thing that struck her next day was the deadly silence of the house. By contrast, outside in the open-air the sound of birds singing and cattle lowing was so loud she might as well have been out in the fields. Small wonder, she thought, when going down the stairs, she saw the hall door was wide open. It had blown open in the draught from the kitchen door which was also wide open. The whole house was as cold as a windowless ruin. Shivering, Miss Lomas closed the doors, and unconsciously took comfort from the solid blocks of furniture and the fat padded armchairs. It would take some wind to blow them away.

But although she had closed the doors the sound of lowing cattle was as loud as ever, louder in fact. Running to the window she was just in time to see a young lad from Garretstown going off down the road driving the entire stock of Brook Farm, cattle and sheep, ahead of him, and belting them onward with George’s ash plant. Every field on the farm was empty. Every gate was open, including the road-gate.

‘Christy! Christy!’ she shouted, and she ran to the foot of the stairs. But even when she went up and banged on his door, the only sound she heard in the room was the creak of bed-springs as its occupant turned over heavily. She went downstairs again. For years she had been handed a cup of tea in bed before she put a foot on the floor. Now she’d have to wrestle with the range.

The range went against her. It was noon by the time she got the kettle boiled. There was no stir from Christy. It gave her a queer feeling to think of a grown man lying all day in his bed like a hog. She tried not to think about him as she went about gathering up the heaps of sweepings she’d been too tired to collect the night before. Then, unable to stand the hunger any longer, she foraged out an old pair of Christy’s boots that he had long ago discarded and went out to the field to dig up a bucket of potatoes.

There wasn’t much butter left to put on the potatoes, but she ate them greedily all the same, and after she’d eaten she felt a lot better. Putting a plateful of the potatoes into the oven for Christy, she went into the dining-room and looked around to see what was to be done there. Before Joss died, it had been her intention to renew the loose covers on the chairs, and indeed, she’d meant to have the room re-painted and re-papered. Now she could not help but feel she’d been caught on the wrong foot. Telling herself however that soap, water and good honest sweat could work miracles she boiled up a tub of water and whipping off the covers she plunged them into the suds. Vigorously she doused them up and down, but very little dirt came out. Instead the water began to turn pink. The dye had run. Ought she to have put something into the water to keep the colour fast? Salt? Soda? What? Well, at least they would be fresh and clean smelling, she thought, as wringing them dry, she went to put them out on the line, but it had begun to rain and she had to bring them back and leave them piled up in the sink. Taking up a scrubbing brush she decided to attack the paintwork. It was while she was on her knees scrubbing the wainscot that Christy appeared in his stocking-feet.

‘You’re taking off more paint than dirt,’ he said contemptuously. Looking down at her handiwork, Miss Lomas saw his words were true. She got to her feet. Her back was breaking. She ought as a start to have tackled an easier job. So when her eye fell on a small grease stain on the wallpaper above the sideboard, she felt to remove it would be a task so simple as to be almost pleasurable. Getting a hunk of bread she pulled out a lump of dough and vigorously rubbed at the red flock wallpaper.

Perhaps the bread should have been stale? The stain seemed only to spread. Or perhaps she hadn’t rubbed hard enough? Leaning forward she was scrubbing with all her strength when to her stupefaction a long triangular strip of the paper gave way under her finger. First it crumpled like a concertina, and then opened out again to stream out from the wall like a pennant. Utterly disheartened now, Miss Lomas threw the bread on the floor which was already scattered with large crumbs. She crept back to the kitchen as to her lair.

Christy’s dinner was still in the oven.

He stayed away all that day too, and when night came and Miss Lomas crawled up the stairs and threw herself on her bed, too tired to undress, she slept so heavily she would not have heard him come back if he had pulled down the staircase.

Next day she woke at cockcrow. Knowing now how hard the range would be to light, she got out of bed at once. The previous night she had shoved a few sticks of kindling into the oven to dry, but when she pulled them out, out too came Christy’s stale plate of dinner, which fell on the floor with a clatter and broke in two. Looking down at the pieces, she consoled herself that the plate would in any case have been impossible to clean, the blackened potatoes were stuck as fast to it as a pattern. Then as she stopped to pick up the pieces, she saw something else to upset her. Under the range there was an empty whiskey bottle.

No wonder he didn’t eat if he spent the day drinking. Where did he get the money for it? Like herself, he had never been asked to give up change when he ran on an errand, but if he had hoarded anything it couldn’t be much. There might, of course, as Parr said, be people willing enough to advance him a few pounds on the strength of the fine farm that was in his name, mortgage or no mortgage.

Just then outside in the yard Miss Lomas heard the same lowing of cattle that she had heard the morning before, but this time looking out, she saw eight or nine lean and scraggy heifers and a small flock of sheep running in the gate, with Christy running after them, as lively as a bee.

So his consorting had been to some purpose? He must have codded his new cronies into giving him a loan on the strength of his expectations from Garretstown. Dear God – the next thing they knew he’d be sent to prison. But for the moment all that mattered was that he’d got hold of a bit of money. Momentarily, her heavy heart was lightened. She went to the door to call him for a cup of tea. After he had penned up the sheep and closed the heifers into a near field he came into the kitchen, and as he came in, he put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a small parcel of meat and threw it on the table. Then, as an afterthought, from the same pocket, he took two letters, bloodied by meat stains. He held one out to her. She saw at once it was from Parr. The other she assumed to be addressed to himself, probably from the same pen. Impulsively, she went over to the range and lifting the lid, she threw the letter, unopened, into the fire. Christy appeared to take no notice of her action. ‘Where’s the tea?’ he asked, taking down a cup from the dresser and reaching for the teapot.

What was in his letter, she wondered? But there was no sound from him but the gulping down of the hot tea. Then, suddenly leaving down his cup, he went over to the range, and lifting the lid he dropped his own letter into the fire. Fast though the flames fastened on it, Miss Lomas saw that it too was unopened. ‘Are you mad?’ she screamed. ‘You don’t know what may be in the letter. It was from Parr, wasn’t it?’

Christy leered at her. ‘If you didn’t care what he had to say, why should I?’ for the first time since George died, he looked her in the eyes, and Miss Lomas realised that her feelings towards him would never change. All that had happened was that where they had previously been divided by hatred, they were now bound by it.

After Christy had swallowed the last of the tea, he went upstairs to his room. Miss Lomas thought he’d gone to bed because he had quite evidently been up all night, but in a minute he came down again with an old shot-gun that he kept for potting at rabbits.

‘If anyone wants to know who is the owner here,’ he said truculently, ‘he can look for his answer down the barrel of this gun,’ and going out into the haggard, he sat down on a heap of hay, facing towards the road, the gun across his knees.

Christy sat on the heap of hay till noon.

When he showed no sign of coming in for his dinner, Miss Lomas brought him out a plate of potatoes. ‘How long do you think you can keep up this game?’ she asked. He made no effort to answer her but she was beginning to realise that those who live together in hate learn to make a language of silence. And in that language nothing need go unsaid.

Christy didn’t leave the yard till dusk, after which he made no attempt to do jobs that badly needed to be done. During the morning one or two neighbouring people passing on the road had looked in through the gate curiously but no one ventured to come in.

The next day was wet, but the only difference this made to Christy was that he sat a bit further back in the haggard. That day too he sat there till dusk. That night he fumbled around the yard in the dark and in some sort of way got a few jobs done that could not be left any longer undone.

Was he going to spend the rest of his life sitting on a heap of hay? Miss Lomas wondered.

On the third day however Miss Lomas caught the sound of a trap on the road. Could she ever mistake the trot of that cob? Running to the back door, she called out to Christy. ‘It’s Parr,’ she warned.

Christy too must have heard the cob but he did not get to his feet and to her astonishment the trap did not stop. Indeed, when it reached their gate, it flashed past faster and Mr Parr was looking straight in front of him between the ears of the cob as if Brook Farm was less than nothing to him.

With a broad grin, Christy got to his feet and threw down the rifle. It had not been loaded.

Reluctantly Miss Lomas had to express approval. ‘He knows what he’s up against now,’ she said timidly.

Christy who had started to whistle, stopped short. ‘If I could get rid of you as early I’d be right,’ he said.

It was just like him to take the good out of a thing. All day, his words rankled, and that afternoon for the first time in years, she went up to his room and distastefully eyeing its condition, she attempted to make his bed. The room was in a bad state. She ought not to have left it to the servant girls all those years. She filled two dustpans with cigarette butts alone, and there was such a smell she would have opened the window, only the sashes were stuck. All in all, she was nearly sick to her stomach before she got out of the room. It was no better than a pig-sty. But pig and all that he was, she felt he’d be grateful to her for her concern on his behalf. Not so. That night, when he went upstairs she heard him cursing and swearing. And next day his door was locked.

*

Casual callers had never been encouraged at Brook Farm. Now hardly a soul ever appeared. If someone did venture in the gate, even if it was only a neighbour, Miss Lomas always summoned Christy who in his turn always picked up the gun before he went to the door to find out what was wanted. In time, Miss Lomas found herself handing him the gun when she called him. And whenever he went out to the fields or even to the yard, he carried it under his arm like a cattle stick, although as often as not he carried it barrel backwards. But Miss Lomas had to admit the gun spoke loud, and what it said carried far. Soon no one at all came near the place, unless an unwary rate collector or warble-fly inspector, who’d scurry off down the drive a lot faster than he’d ambled up it. Christy got the name of being an ugly customer.

One day however a stranger appeared while Christy was in town. Miss Lomas ran into the hall and dragged at the hall-door, but the door was swollen with damp and by the time she got it open, the stranger had already gone around the gable to try the back door. Miss Lomas was thrown into such a flurry by her own temerity, and also by a fear that Christy might return, she flew after the man like a hen flying out from under a farm cart. Without waiting to find out why the man had called, Miss Lomas began to talk to him herself.

‘If it’s Christy you’re looking for,’ she cried without preamble, ‘you’re lucky it isn’t him that’s here. He’d run you off the place. He’s trying to best the Garrets, you see.’ Here she gave a loud scoffing laugh. ‘Him! that has no claim at all on the place. It’s me that has the claim,’ she cried hysterically. Then controlling herself, she leaned forward confidingly. ‘Don’t let that worry you though. You did right to come. A wrong impression was put abroad about me. Do you think I relish the way the place is going to rack and ruin? Me, who always put the interests of Brook Farm above all else. Wait a minute, sir, and I’ll get my coat and show you over the house.’ As she spoke she was looking anxiously around in case Christy might be coming back. ‘Wait another minute, sir,’ she said. ‘I have a better idea. If you’ll be so kind as to take a quick look around the yard, I’ll ready up the rooms a bit for your inspection.’

Hurrying back into the house, she dragged a brush over the floor of the kitchen and rubbed ineffectively with her apron at the tea-stains on the table. Then she ran out again but there was no sign of the stranger. Instead Christy was standing in the middle of the yard, a sneer on his face.

‘Begod,’ he said, and he gave an ugly laugh, ‘you did my work better for me than I ever could do it. That poor devil thought it was into the hands of a lunatic he got. There’ll be no more intruders here at Brook Farm from now till the day one or other of us is boxed up for the clay.’

Miss Lomas felt the truth of his words fasten upon her mind like a clamp, fixing her to her fate. Across the neighbouring fields, flattened by winter, the cemetery was plainer to be seen than usual. But even if she hung on till her end came, could she be sure where she’d be buried? Then a queer and terrifying thought came to her. If she died here alone in the house with him, would Christy bother to have her buried at all? She looked at him. He was staring at her malevolently. From romances she’d read as a girl, she’d known that eyes could speak love. She had never known they could more eloquently speak with malice. She shivered and went back in the house.

From that day the silence between the two of them grew until it was as thick as the grass in the understocked fields, the ragged scutch that invaded the driveway and pushed up between the cobbles in the yard. Looking out sometimes at this neglect and decay, Miss Lomas muttered to herself. But if Christy heard her, he shut her up quick. ‘Put a sock in it, will you, for God’s sake,’ he’d say.

Yet, sometimes he too muttered to himself as he shuffled about.

Miss Lomas never rightly knew what he did all day long, although she had to admit he kept himself occupied. Sometimes she’d see him with a hammer in his hand bending over a piece of farm machinery. At another time, she’d hear him driving in a paling post into the ground in a far field, the blows of the mallet echoing back, heavy but irregular, and with long intervals between blows. Or else he might come into the kitchen and rummage about for a bit of string to patch up the harness of an ass he’d got somewhere or other. She grudgingly admitted he was making as good a fist of things as could be made, all in all.

In the old days farm horses and carts, the pony and trap and all the farm machinery, had been kept at Garretstown, and it had been workmen from Garretstown who cut the hedges at Brook Farm, weeded the garden and scuffled the paths. As for odd jobs like taking a jackdaw’s nest out of a chimney, cleaning the gutters, opening a blocked drain or cutting timber and splitting it into logs for the fire, who else would have done these things?

Now such jobs had to be left undone. At first, Miss Lomas was only concerned about the neglect inside the house, but gradually she realised that the neglect outdoors had a more direct bearing on her domain than she’d taken into account. When the drainpipe over the back door got blocked, she had to step through a puddle as big as a lake every time she went in or out. And when a slate blew off the roof just over her own bedroom, the rain came down in a waterfall on to her bed and she had to move the bed in the middle of the room. Inside and out, the place was becoming a shambles. It was no worse, of course, than the small farmhouses round about, but if Christy was satisfied with this comparison, she was not.

Once, as she stood in the doorway looking out at the dandelions and nettles that had sprung up in every crack and crevice of the yard, she couldn’t control her tongue. ‘That’s a nice sight,’ she spat out at Christy.

‘At least it’s more natural to see things growing outdoors than indoors,’ said Christy, and following his glance Miss Lomas saw a dirty big toadstool sprouting in the corner of the kitchen ceiling. Speechless, she stared up at the ugly sight. Then, getting a broom handle she hit at it as if it was a living creature. When it splattered all over the floor, she felt like a murderer.

Strange to say, the house had deteriorated faster inside than outside. The yard didn’t really look much worse after six months, for whereas weeds wither and die, and each Spring they had to make a fresh start, the dirt and grime indoors was cumulative, and in places that she could not reach, like the top of presses and cupboards, dust lay as thick as plush.

As well as that, Miss Lomas would have thought that it would have taken centuries before her large stock of linen and crockery would be exhausted, but as the kitchen cups got cracked and plates got chipped, it wasn’t long until she had to draw on the good china that was hitherto kept in the dining-room cupboard. Upstairs too, when a sheet tore, or wore thin in the middle, there was no one to mend it and she had to encroach on the bed linen kept for the spare rooms. Then came the terrible day when she found that damp had mildewed even the unused sheets, and they too had rotted. Damp was eating up everything, even the plaster from the walls. She felt it could eat the flesh from one’s bones.

The first winter of their unhappy partnership, Christy cut down any trees that were not too big for him to fell alone. These logs had to be used for fuelling the range and so the kitchen was the only part of the house that was reasonably warm. At night the only way Miss Lomas could get warm was to sleep between the blankets, which meant that these too in time got discoloured and threadbare. As for Christy’s room, now that he kept it locked there was no knowing its condition. As she hurried past it a smell came out under the door, but soon this smell was indistinguishable from the smell all over the house. She had almost given up scrubbing and washing, for her labours seemed only to hasten disintegration. Curtains and loosecovers at first faded, then frayed, and finally they flittered into ribbons that fluttered about in the constant draughts that went criss cross through every room.

One day as Christy and herself were eating the pot-full of potatoes which had become their staple food, there was a clatter in the dining-room, and when, wordlessly, they ran in there they saw that a piece of the plaster cornice had fallen from the ceiling. Christy looking morosely upward, ‘The roof will fall in on us next. We’ll be driven out by the rain and the weather.’

‘Not me!’ cried Miss Lomas stubbornly. ‘I’ll stand on my rights to the end.’

‘Begod, that won’t be long now by the look of you!’ he said cruelly.

Miss Lomas had not heard him however. Picking up a piece of the fallen plaster she’d gone back into the kitchen with the tears pouring down her face. ‘Poor Brook Farm,’ she said to herself. ‘Poor, poor Brook Farm.’

It was a long time since Miss Lomas had cried and even now she did so silently and hopelessly. Not till a ray of sun came through the grimy windows, did she take heart from the fact that the fine weather had come. She went out into the yard. Alas the bright sunlight only showed up the utter desolation of the land. The fields were as bare and trodden as a strip of commons. The hedges were woody and gapped at the bottom and their tops reared up into the sky as if to fence out the birds. A few scrawny cattle came and went where they liked. The wire mesh that had once enclosed the flower garden in front of the house was long rusted away. Now the little garden was palisaded only by nettles. At that moment there was a beast standing under the dining-room window.

‘One of those bullocks will put his horns through the window yet!’ she said out loud, not knowing or caring if Christy had heard her or not. He had heard her alright and when he went out, although there was a leer on his face, she thought he was maybe going to mend the fence. But it was to scull whatever few cattle he had left.

The sculling of cattle was always done at Brook Farm, but in deference to the susceptibility of the women in the house, even the servant girl, the beasts were done in a shed and put out in a far field till their poor heads healed, although George and Joss always did it as humanely as possible. Now Christy did it himself, and he did it in the yard, clumsily and cruelly, and afterwards, smeared with gore, the beasts blundered around the place where Miss Lomas could not but see them and share in their agony.

That afternoon when she had occasion to go into the parlour, looking out the window, she saw the same poor beast of the morning, his head glittering with dried blood, his eyes blinded with clipped hair. Unnerved she ran back into the kitchen where Christy was washing his hands in a basin at the table. ‘Oh, take him away! Take him away!’ she screamed with her hands to her own head.

‘He’ll be taken away soon enough,’ Christy replied.

Miss Lomas took her hands down from her head. Lately the fields had seemed more silent and empty than ever. Was that poor beast the last on the land?

‘Won’t you be buying more cattle?’ she asked. The next minute she could have bitten off her tongue. Her own small store of money was long gone. It was Christy now who provided them both with tea and bread, and the odd bit of meat or bacon that kept them alive. It was he who had paid the rates and the interest on the mortgage. Moreover he was smoking now as well as drinking, and he was never without a copy of the Racing Gazette sticking up out of his pocket. Where could he find the money for all this save by selling beast after beast?

With no cattle on the land, the real despoiling of Brook Farm would begin. Now he would start to sell anything he could lay hands on.

At first Christy only sold the grain-bins and feed-troughs, turnip slicers and tree guards, articles that he could take away in a wheel-barrow. Then he pulled the corrugated iron off the sheds and sold it for scrap. Then except for one at the road, he sold the gates. What next, Miss Lomas wondered, as she watched these items being wheeled down the drive. Searching the house, she found a key that would lock the dining-room door. But a month or so later she heard a splintering sound one day and found Christy had put his shoulder to the door and got in. He came out with two chairs.

‘Well?’ he said, confronting her. ‘Which do you want, an empty house or an empty belly?’ After that, every piece of furniture in the house went the way of the chairs. And as the days got cold and winter advanced, he pulled up paling posts and sold them for firewood.

Another day standing at the window pinched with cold, Miss Lomas saw him trundle off to town with a barrow of rotten stumps he’d dug out of the ground. She wished she herself had the strength to drag up a few roots because the only fire they ever had now was a blaze of twigs she pulled out of the hedges, or a branch brought down by the wind from high trees on the mearing which he hadn’t dared to cut. She let the blaze die down when she’d boiled the kettle or got the spuds cooked. Staring into the cold and empty grate one evening although it was only five or six o’clock she went to bed to try and keep the life in her body. The thought of the winter was unbearable to her. It was not so bad for Christy who was still young and had no aches and pains in his bones.

But one morning on waking, she was startled to hear a roar in the flue of the dining-room chimney which ran up behind the mantlepiece in her own room. She jumped out of bed in a cold sweat thinking the house was on fire. There was a smell of smoke and she could hear a crackle of sparks. She ran down the stairs, but halfway down she heard Christy moving about below, and her panic was allayed. At the same time she saw that the door of his bedroom was open and she couldn’t resist looking into the room as she passed. She hadn’t seen into it for years.

Compared with the general neglect of the house the neglect in Christy’s room was classic. The floor was carpeted with butts, and there were so many old yellowed copies of the Racing Calendar piled in the corners they acted as tables and chairs, of which there were none. But it was the bed that struck Miss Lomas. She knew that no more than herself, Christy could not have much left in the way of blankets to put over him at night. His coverings, like hers, would be mostly made up of old jackets and coats. But this morning his mattress was bare. She hurried on downstairs, although she couldn’t hear her own footsteps for the roar of the fires, because through the banister rail she could see that the kitchen range, too, was blazing like a furnace, although its roar stopped for a moment as Christy who stood in front of it stuffed another armload of paper on top of what was already fiercely burning.

‘What are you doing? You’ll set the chimney alight,’ she cried but she got her answer from an old straw suitcase open on the floor. She hadn’t seen it since the day Christy first came to Brook Farm. But she remembered it well. Only an orphan would have had luggage like it. Now, with its webbing ravelled, its strap as hard as iron, and the catches red with rust, it was a stranger sight than ever. But into it Christy had stuffed all his worldly goods, among which she saw with concern the stub of a shaving stick. ‘You’re not leaving, Christy?’ she cried, but to Christy, intent on trying to get the catches to fasten, this question seemed so superfluous he laughed.

‘Maybe you didn’t hear the news,’ he said, knowing well she had no way of hearing anything except through him. ‘The old one up at Garretstown was taken to hospital to a public ward in a public hospital,’ he added with an emphasis on some of the words the significance of which escaped Miss Lomas.

It was so long since Miss Lomas had thought about Miss Garret she didn’t at once know to whom he so vulgarly referred. ‘Oh, is she dying?’ she cried.

‘No such luck,’ said Christy. ‘It’s not a real hospital, it’s an old people’s home where she’ll be preserved like a mummy for another half a century. There can’t be much left of the Garret estate, at this rate there’ll be nothing at all for me. The game is up at last. I listened to you long enough, I’m getting out of here. I’ll be gone to Dublin on the next train and I’ll be there in time to catch the night boat for England. I know Parr!’ He looked at her viciously. ‘He could have the law on us for the damage that’s been done here.’

Miss Lomas quailed before the spiteful look he gave her but his words themselves she regarded as rubbish. ‘Any damage that has been done is only the result of neglect,’ she said with dignity. ‘And whose fault is that?’

‘Ah, you’re a bad case,’ Christy said and he gave a laugh. Having got the catches on his case closed, he hoisted the case under his arm, like he must have caught up the clucking hen on the day of the Mock Auction, then, leaving it down again for a minute he took out a cigarette and going over to the range he lit it from the dying embers. Miss Lomas felt he would as lightheartedly lit it from the flames of the house. For a minute they stood looking at each other. Then, on an impulse, Christy put his hand in his pocket and threw down on the table a ten shilling note so dirty and crumpled it was almost objectionable. ‘That might hold your bones together till they come and take you away,’ he said, as, with another laugh he went off.

It was all so sudden. Miss Lomas stood in an empty house, outside which were the empty fields, and a terrible panic seized her. Christy had become almost as much a part of Brook Farm as herself, and at night when she used to lie in bed in the house that had lost most of its window catches and locks, she had nevertheless felt lapped around with a strange protectiveness that emanated from him, even if, as often as not, he was half a mile away stuck in a furze-bush, dead-drunk.

He mustn’t go, she thought, and she ran to stop him. But Christy had already got as far as the road where a dilapidated motor car was waiting for him. When it started up it made such a racket her cry to him was lost. She went back to the house in a daze.

All Miss Lomas could think to do at first was make a cup of tea, but like the day after George’s funeral when she looked into the tea canister there was only tea-dust in it. Dully she stared at the ten shilling note that lay among the crumbs on the table, but it was so long since she had handled money it seemed of no more use than a toffee-wrapper. Disdaining it, she looked away. Had she not always been above money? Indeed it seemed to her at that moment that the world had really no need for it. She felt sure that if only people would behave properly money could be done without. Had she herself not proved this? But to whom? Only to herself, she thought sadly. Suddenly the scales fell from her eyes. They had all of them, Parr and Miss Garret and Christy, they had all thought it was money she wanted. Oh, what a dreadful mistake! What a terrible misapprehension! She must remedy it at once, she thought. Immediately! She must go to town and have it out with Parr.

Climbing the stairs, Miss Lomas for the first time in a long while, felt purposeful and confident, and when she opened her closet door it gave a great lift to her spirit to smell the camphor that had successfully battled for so long against destructive moths. That smell was like a promise that all would in the end be well.

How wise she had been to spare her best garments and not put them over her in bed at night as she had often been tempted to do. Fumbling among the clothes, she pulled out the last costume she had bought. It was the smartest, the most high-class, the most costly costume she had ever bought. Stepping into the skirt she pulled it up proudly. She felt she was being proved right in one thing anyway; good quality garments never lost their shape. That was true, but alas, she herself had lost shape. She might as well have stepped into a rain-water barrel. For a moment she almost gave way to despair. But diving into the closet again she brought to light the old costume she had worn the day she first walked in the door of Brook Farm. Hadn’t she always said that if you kept a thing for long enough you’d find a use for it in the end? Everything seemed to be working to a pattern. When last she wore this suit she was as slim as a stem, and now, again, she was as thin as a stalk. Except for the padded shoulders and the fact that the skirt was hobbled, the costume looked very well on her, she thought. The skirt was a bit long, but considering that she was wearing Christy’s shoes, this was an advantage. Her feet were so swollen there was no question of trying to squeeze them into any of the neat little shoes that had stood patiently for so long on the floor of the closet. Hats were a different matter though. And gloves. And handbags. Taking down a hatbox covered with wallpaper patterned with violets faded but recognisable, the dear little flowers, she selected accessories to match the costume. It was a pity that every looking-glass in the house had been broken or sold and the one in her own room so spotty there was no seeing oneself in it. So although she couldn’t appraise her appearance, she drew herself up and confidently went downstairs. To give an auspicious start to her mission, she tugged at the front door till she got it open.

It was many years since Miss Lomas had been on the public road. Motor cars now, and not traps, flashed past. She was a bit put out when people she met did not appear to recognise her but she gave no sign of caring. And when three or four small children, open-mouthed fell into step behind her, she would not have sent them back if she had not feared their mothers might miss them and worry on their account.

It was a long walk to the town. It was tiring too, but like an engine excitement drove her onward, and at last she got to the outskirts of the town. But so many new houses had been built in the town since she’d last been there she doubted whether she’d find her way to the main street so when, passing a row of dismal cottages, recollecting that in one of them the widowed sister of Mr Parr used to reside, she had an impulse to stop and enquire if the lawyer’s office was still in the same place. But she decided against stopping, thinking that having prospered he would no doubt have arranged for his nieces and nephews to reside in a better quarter. Anyway she had seen a very common looking girl standing in the doorway with curling pins in her hair. Certainly Mr Parr’s dependants no longer lived there. She hurried on.

Mr Parr’s office was where it had always been. It had not changed much since the days when she used to sit outside in the trap and hold the reins while George Garret went inside. But mistaking a new bronze plate for tarnished brass, it seemed to her that perhaps he had not prospered as much as she would have thought. From this observation indeed she took such heart that upon pushing open the outer door, and finding herself confronted by two other doors, one marked Enquiries and the other Private, she had no hesitation whatever in making towards the latter, until she was stopped short by a loud voice. ‘Where do you think you are going?’ the voice called out.

Startled, she stopped dead but next minute, seeing she had only to deal with a raw young man, weedier even than Christy had been at his age, his face covered with pimples, Miss Lomas brushed him aside. Grasping the door-knob she went through the private door with such force that even without recognising her Mr Parr gave an exclamation.

‘Good God!’ Parr said, then, seeing who it was, he repeated his exclamation. ‘Good God!’ What in the world had brought her to town? Was she ill? She had shrunk to half her size. He was appalled at her condition. And what of Christy? Queer gossip about the pair had reached him from time to time. But the fears roused by such stories were instantly dispelled by a look of loneliness in her eyes that vouched for her virginity. An unexpected feeling of pity for her came over him. ‘My dear Miss Lomas!’ he cried out.

Miss Lomas, too, was stirred at sight of Mr Parr in the flesh, if such words could be used to describe the leathery little bat she saw before her sunk in a swivel chair he was barely able to swivel. Stretching out her hands, she ran forward to him as if laden with bounties. ‘He’s gone!’ she cried. ‘Gone at last! Poor Brook Farm can yet be saved.’

Mr Parr sank lower into his chair. She could only mean Christy. The fellow must have heard about Miss Garret. ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘No doubt word reached him that Miss Garret was taken from Garretstown?’ The old calculating look she knew so well had come back into his eyes.

Miss Lomas nodded and taking out an elegant but discoloured handkerchief, she wiped a dry eye. ‘How is the poor thing?’ she asked. ‘I never knew her intimately, you know.’ Leaning forward she spoke more familiarly. ‘I may as well tell you, Mr Parr, I never cared much for the poor thing. Just the same I think it is not at all suitable that the poor thing should be put into a public hospital, a kind of a home not much better than a poorhouse, Christy said.’

So Christy had not been a complete fool. He had come to his senses at last and seen the writing on the wall. But Miss Lomas was still concerned about Miss Garret.

‘Is it known to whom the poor thing will leave the estate when she does die?’ she asked. ‘Surely that person can advance the money to see she has proper care to the end.’

Mr Parr gasped.

‘You can’t have forgotten that there is a family trust. Christy is the sole heir but he was a wise fellow to skedaddle. He could have found himself in a worse plight than when he inherited Brook Farm. Debts are all he would inherit.’

‘But surely Miss Garret must have some personal effects that she would be free to dispose of in her own right?’

‘It is true I believe that she has a few, a few baubles which,’ Mr Parr coughed discreetly, ‘which she insisted on leaving to me, and so I had to advise her that as a beneficiary under the testament I could not act for her in that matter and that she would be obliged to make her will with another solicitor. However I understand from him that they are merely small objects of sentimental value, to her I mean, but otherwise worthless.’

Miss Lomas seemed momentarily at a loss.

‘Well that is too bad but I will come to the point of my visit here,’ she said. ‘It is my opinion that Miss Garret must be taken out of the place where she has been put and brought to Brook Farm where I can take care of her and where she can be given some comfort and companionship in the end of her days. You and I both owe it to George and Joss to see this is done.’

Mr Parr gasped. Noting that she hurried on, ‘I am aware that some repairs will have to be carried out before it is possible to receive her, and some essential replacements of crockery, linen and the like will have to be made. But thank God the house is there and available to us in order that we can perform a great charity.’

Was she mad? Not for the first time Mr Parr wondered about this.

‘But Brook Farm is not available to us,’ he shouted. ‘Why can’t you get that into your head? You never had any right there, much less me. And whether Christy is gone or not, and even if we never hear from him again, he is still the lawful owner. Your intentions are of the best. They do you credit, Miss Lomas, but I’m afraid they cannot be implemented.’

At these words the dejection which descended on Miss Lomas was such as Mr Parr had never before seen come over any human being. And yet he himself felt relieved. Now at last, she, too, would have to take herself off, although God knows where she would go. She’d be off his hands anyway and at the moment that was all that seemed to matter. But suddenly Miss Lomas rallied.

‘Christy?’ she cried. ‘If he is our only hope now we must get him back. A motor car came and took him to the station, but the next train to Dublin is not due to leave for at least two hours.’ She sprang to her feet. ‘You must go to the station at once and get hold of him.’

‘For what in the name of God?’ Mr Parr was suffering such palpitations he thought he was going to have a heart attack.

‘Because you just said young Christy has come to his senses at last. He knows he has reached the end of the road. He is desperate Mr Parr. He will almost certainly be prepared to do business with anyone. He will sell Brook Farm this minute even if he only gets half the price of the mortgage. Indeed I believe he is so desperate he’ll probably sell it for a song.’

‘You might be right,’ Mr Parr said dryly, ‘but can’t you see it’s too late in the day now to find a buyer. Are you blind to that as well as to everything else?’

Miss Lomas drew herself up and something of her old authority returned to her voice.

‘It’s you that’s blind,’ she said, ‘can’t you see it’s you yourself who must buy Brook Farm, and you must act fast if you’re not to lose a golden opportunity, an opportunity that only comes once in a lifetime. Quick! Where is your coat! There is no time to be lost. If he’s not in the station he’ll be in the nearest bar. And if he’s half-seas over when you find him, that will work to your advantage. If he has a consort of scroungers with him, that too will be in your favour. They won’t be too drunk to see that they may still bleed him a bit.’ Here she threw a look at the clock. ‘The banks are still open. They’ll see to it he can cash your cheque. Don’t forget your cheque book. And here’s another thing, be sure and take your clerk with you to be a witness to the transaction. He’ll hardly be needed here while you’re away. Anyway, I can stay here and give what assistance is needed maybe to answer the bell or admit a client if one calls. I can provide him with a chair and say that you were regrettably called away on urgent business but would be back shortly.’ In a matter of seconds she had him on his feet and in his coat. ‘Isn’t destiny extraordinary,’ she said. ‘George always said there is a right time and a wrong time for everything we do. I used to wonder long ago why you never did buy a farm of your own.’

‘I never got much encouragement to do so,’ said Mr Parr, ‘Never from the Garrets,’ he added acidly. ‘If you remember they regarded me highly as a lawyer but never lost an opportunity of saying they did not think much of me as a farmer, although I managed all their affairs for a considerable number of years.’ He leaned forward. ‘Don’t you remember, Miss Lomas, that not long before he died George said in your hearing that one day in the open would be the end of me. They didn’t think a man was a man at all if he wasn’t big and red-faced like themselves.’

Miss Lomas was surprised at a semi-quaver of bitterness in his voice. In the past she had sometimes wondered how he had taken the Garrets’ jibes at his white face and skinny legs. Then she had been on the side of the mockers. Surprisingly now she felt more like siding with him. ‘Ah well! We can’t all be big and beefy!’ she said. ‘And isn’t it odd it’s them and not you that’s now six foot under the sod.’ When a squint of gratitude came into his eyes, she didn’t miss it. ‘It’s my belief that you will make as good a fist of farming it as anyone. After all, what is there to it, only watching the grass grow and telling a fat beast from a thin one?’

Mr Parr seemed somewhat taken by surprise but he bowed in gratitude to her tribute. ‘Thank you, Miss Lomas,’ he said.

‘It’s true!’ said Miss Lomas. ‘If only that terrible Christy had not let the place go so far downhill. It’s only fair to warn you that there will have to be a lot of money spent on the land and the outhouses. Ah well,’ she said practically, ‘we can’t have our loaf and eat it at the same time. Think of the bargain you’ll be getting.’ Seeing that Mr Parr did not look as happy as he ought, she patted him on the shoulder. ‘Little by little, that’s the way we’ll tackle the job. We must keep a proper balance, you know.’ And when as he still looked glum she gave him a little shake. ‘Cheer up!’ she said. ‘It won’t be too hard to put the place to rights if we go about it with the proper spirit.’ Indeed she herself was overcome by such a rush of energy and enthusiasm it seemed to her that when she’d get back there that evening she would turn out every room at Brook Farm and overtake in a few hours all she had failed to accomplish in a decade. But this rush of vitality brought a rush of blood to her head and she flopped back again into her chair. And when she tried to rise a second time, her legs wobbled and a sweat broke out all over her body. ‘I think I’m going to faint,’ she gasped.

Mr Parr scrambled to his feet. ‘Help, help!’ he shouted, although, almost before the words were out of his mouth, as if he was listening at the door, Miss Lomas thought, his pimply apprentice ran in. ‘Quick! Get this woman a cup of tea,’ cried Mr Parr, ‘and some sandwiches, anything at all, as long as it’s quick.’

But weak as she was Miss Lomas heard what the young fellow said. She always had good ears.

‘Who is the Old Bags anyway?’ the young man asked.

Pained, Miss Lomas closed her eyes. ‘Is it wise to let such an ill-mannered pup come into contact with your clients?’ she asked weakly, but feeling she had been unkind, she modified her criticism. ‘Perhaps the young man is delicate, that sallow skin, those pimples.’

‘Delicate?’ cried Mr Parr. ‘Is it that fellow? Well, let me tell you if he’s delicate, it’s not for want of food. That fellow has been plied with the best, the same as his sisters and brothers, since the first hour he came into my care.’

‘Oh dear me!’ Miss Lomas’s hand flew to her heart. ‘He isn’t your nephew, is he?’ she cried in embarrassment but it was an embarrassment that was put to rout by one of those impulses of generosity that had characterised her in the old days. ‘The poor boy,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry for him.’ Suddenly she sat up, full of life once more. ‘Why didn’t you send him out to me at Brook Farm?’ she cried. ‘There’s nothing like the country for putting red cheeks on young people. Indeed if it comes to that, there is nothing like it for putting manners on them too. Oh dear, what a pity to think of all the summers that young fellow could have spent out there with me and his brothers and sisters too for that matter.’ Distressed she sighed. ‘Well, it can’t be helped now,’ she said, but she looked peculiarly at the old man. ‘So you never married?’ she said with a look as belittling as the gaze of an undertaker sizing him up for a coffin.

‘I may not have married, Miss Lomas,’ Mr Parr said sourly, but I have had a full share of life’s responsibilities. And I am by no means rid of those responsibilities either. You may not know it, living as you have done in such unnatural seclusion, but when I took over the care of my poor sister’s children they were already a neglected lot. It was not easy to rear them from such a poor start.’

‘You don’t tell me? Bad enough to be saddled with them, without them being ailing and difficult.’ Genuinely sympathetic, she reached out and manacled his hands in a warm moist clasp. But she had seen that the word saddled was too strong a word to have used; it had put him in a poor light. No doubt when his nieces and nephews were growing up, he had found some sort of fulfilment in the rearing of them. It must even have given him pleasure to pay for their books and satchels, their little boots and mufflers. And when he called to the cottage where they lived and for which of course he would have been paying the rent, it must have made him feel good to have them throw their arms around his neck and hug him in thanks for the bag of sweets he would most likely have pulled from his pocket. Ah! but it must have been a different matter altogether when he wakened up to the realisation that for all he had spent on them they were far from being what they would have been had they been his own. Then the boots and books he had so magnanimously supplied would have been taken for granted, and he would have had to put his money into giving them the airs and graces they now clearly lacked. Nevertheless, no matter what, she thought he should not have let them grow up in the town. ‘There’s no use crying over spilled milk, I suppose,’ she said briskly. ‘Weren’t you the foolish man to let the Garrets ridicule you out of trying your hand at farming. Isn’t it the only way of life that is natural to any man.’ She paused. ‘You could have added to your income too, and for all your money, I daresay you could have done with a few extra pounds, having had extra burdens to carry. To say nothing of the young people themselves who would have reaped a harvest richer than gold!’ But here, as if her words had set up an echo in her mind, she leant forward excitedly. ‘Do you remember George Garret always said the land was so good at Brook Farm that if you sowed farthings you’d reap sovereigns?’

‘That’s right, I remember well. Many a time he said it,’ said Mr Parr. ‘Tell me, would you say it was very run down, the land, I mean?’

Miss Lomas pondered the question. ‘It’s the house I’m worried about,’ she said. ‘I think the sooner you come out and inspect the place, the better.’

It was at this point a tray arrived, with tea, bread and butter and slices of cold ham, and although Miss Lomas fastened a famished gaze on it, she took time for a quick look at the young man who carried it before he went out again. ‘He certainly isn’t as robust as I’d like to see him,’ she said. ‘It might be a good idea to send him out right away. Can he drive a car? If so, how about having him drive me back? Then he could give you a report on the place and whatever one may say about one’s own, they can be trusted better than strangers. She had poured out a cup of tea and taken a sip, when she had another idea. ‘Why not have him stay out there tonight?’ she said. ‘He could have Christy’s room! If he gave me a hand, I wouldn’t be long getting it to rights. It would need a good cleaning out of course. You know what Christy was like, but it might be advisable for him to bring a few blankets with him too,’ she said. Here, however Miss Lomas could no longer refrain from falling on the food, but before taking her knife and fork to the ham, felt obliged to add another recommendation. ‘And some supplies perhaps,’ she said, as casually as was compatible with her famished state. Mr Parr got to his feet.

‘When I come back from the station, I think that I will leave you home myself, Miss Lomas,’ he said. ‘We can discuss a lot of matters on the way out. And now I’ll leave you for a brief time to finish your meal in peace.’ Calling his nephew to accompany him he hurried out. Miss Lomas nodded her thanks to him as she stuffed a forkful of ham into her mouth.

*

It was late in the afternoon when Mr Parr and Miss Lomas drove out of the town. Mr Parr had thought it wise to leave his nephew behind for the moment. He had made a very good deal with Christy but it was as well to keep things quiet until he had possession of the deeds and cleared his entitlement.

‘How did Christy react to it all?’ Miss Lomas asked.

‘Well as you said he was slightly befuddled. He actually wanted to take less than I offered.’

They had made one stop, because they were passing the family grocers where she used to deal, Miss Lomas gave an exclamation.

‘The supplies!’ she said, and remarkably nimbly she hopped out of the car. ‘I’ll tell them to put them down to you, I suppose,’ she said before she dodged into the shop. It was half an hour before they were on their way again. This time, more accustomed to the newfangled vehicle, Miss Lomas sat happily looking out at the countryside. It was a stuffy way to travel compared with an open trap in which one got the air, and an unobstructed view, but of course it was faster, because in no time at all they were near to Brook Farm. They ought surely to be coming in sight of it? They had turned around a fence from which, in the old days, the gleaming white gates could be seen. She stole a look at Mr Parr’s face and it was by the dismay on it, she realised that they were already at the gateway.

The gate was open, but not thrown wide in the hospitable way of old, when Christy would have been sent running down at the sound of the trap. It was only half-open, its broken hinges having caused it to list and drop, leaving one end stuck like an anchor into the thick mud that totally replaced the washed river pebbles with which it used be annually surfaced. There was no sign of the spud-stone, or else it too was sunk into the mud.

The old solicitor stopped the car.

‘How are the cattle kept from straying out on the road?’ he asked.

‘The land is empty,’ Miss Lomas whispered.

Mr Parr shook his head. ‘How do we get in?’ He tugged at the gate but it did not budge. Yet in the mud of the drive he saw the tracks of a cart. After a closer scrutiny he saw that the cart had come out through a gap in the hedge where a number of rotten planks and a sheet of warped roofing-iron had been thrown across the ditch. The old man eyed this pass-way distrustfully. Getting back into the car he parked it carefully on the far side of the road and proceeded to help Miss Lomas down. ‘We’ll walk up if you don’t mind,’ he said, and he began to make his way up the drive through the puddles and potholes. ‘Ah dear!’ he murmured again and again when, sidestepping a puddle, he nearly had his eye pulled out by a briar trailing out from a hedge. Through a gap in the hedge he saw with alarm the barren state of the land. Field ran into field, and the headlands could only be distinguished by an abandoned ploughshare or a rusty harrow through the iron ribs of which the grass had grown, riveting them like skeletons to the earth. ‘Ah dear! Ah dear!’ the old man kept muttering, and even Miss Lomas plodding along beside him, was hardly prepared for seeing from without the neglect with which she was more familiar from within. Even she had not realised what a shambles had been made of the actual farmland. She gave her attention to the house.

Poor Brook Farm. The windows were broken, the paint peeled away, and from the gutters there spilled out a filthy green fungus. As for the roof, not only were there the holes where tiles had blown off, but the whole roof sagged in the middle like an old mattress.

At last the pair reached the place where formerly the driveway had swept inward towards the hall-door, but humbly Miss Lomas plodded past this point and went around the gable to the back door. Mr Parr followed wordlessly and when she stood back to let him pass into the kitchen, he was so appalled by the dirt and decay that he gladly sank down on a backless chair she proffered him. Following his astonished gaze Miss Lomas too stared around. Rot, woodworm, rat holes and holes where fixtures had been torn out of the walls, the place, even on that summer evening, was like a sieve. Except for the chair on which he sat and the grime-coated kitchen table, the kitchen was bare, while through the hall­way it could be seen that the parlour too, that once was stuffed with armchairs and carpets, was now as empty as a shed. Miss Lomas felt the moment called for some comfort.

‘We were lucky to get the place before he did irremediable harm. Christy, I mean,’ she said. She pointed up at a hole in the lath-and-plaster of the ceiling overhead. He’d have torn out the laths for firing, only he couldn’t reach up to get at them,’ she said. ‘If you stand here, and look up, you’ll see where he tried to bring them down by battering at them with the handle of the sweeping brush.’ But as she pulled at his sleeve her own foot suddenly went down through one of the floor boards, because this spot on the floor was under the spot in the ceiling that was under the spot on the roof where the tiles had blown away and let in the rain. To pass off the awkwardness she laughed, although her foot hurt. But Mr Parr didn’t join in the laughter. ‘It will cost a King’s ransom to put this place to rights, if it can be done at all,’ he said sharply.

For a minute Miss Lomas said nothing. Then she too spoke with some asperity.

‘All that need be done at the start is put an appearance on the place.’

The phrase was so quaint Mr Parr was taken aback. Mistaking his sudden scrutiny of her face for interest in her proposition Miss Lomas’s own face lit up with eagerness. ‘What would it involve but some slates on the roof, a few tins of paint, a length or two of new timber and a couple of pounds of nails.’ As she saw his eye rest on the broken window in the kitchen she frowned impatiently, not at it but at him. ‘That’s nothing,’ she said. ‘There’s a few panes gone elsewhere in the house too, but glass is cheap. If only there had been a bit of putty put in these window frames from time to time, the glass would never have fallen out. Indeed if there had been money made available to me for polishes and cleaning powders, there mightn’t have been any repairs needed at all.’ Suddenly she ran out into the hall and called the solicitor to come after her. ‘The rest of the house is very well preserved,’ she said, ‘only for a few damp spots. Would you like to look around?’ But although they had not noticed it steal into the house, the gloom of dusk had come down on Brook Farm. Nothing daunted, Miss Lomas looked around for matches. ‘There are no lights in the front of the house, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘The bulbs have all blown, and some of the switches are defective. With years of damp and disuse wires perish, you know. In any case it would not have been safe to have light bulbs in empty rooms where they’d only be left burning day and night by irresponsible people. As a matter of fact, even in the old days, I was worried about the wiring here. It was not in a very good state when the Garrets bought the place. They were always intending to renew it. I myself was always pressing Joss to have it done,’ she paused, ‘before the little upset occurred.’ But seeing Mr Parr look startled she lowered her voice – ‘his death, I mean!’ She thought he was even more startled at this, but it was hard to see anything clearly now in the dark. ‘The re-wiring of the house ought to be attended to at once. There’s nothing as dangerous as faulty electricity. And now is our opportunity to get it done at a low cost,’ she added, as if she were speaking to a child, and she pointed to a rat hole, ‘now while there are holes and cracks everywhere the wires can be run through the house without taking up floorboards and splintering the wainscot. You know what electricians are!’ Then suddenly she had an inspiration. ‘I suppose one of your nephews wouldn’t happen to be handy about the house? Would there be one of them that could attend to the wiring for instance? Think what a saving that would be! And at the same time he would be getting the benefit of the fresh air and the wonderful peace and quiet of the country. How about the young man I saw in your office? How about him?’ She paused and then she leaned forward and spoke in a loud confident tone. ‘I don’t want to frighten you, but by the look of him I’d say the sooner you get him out here to Brook Farm the better. In fact I’d say there is no time to be lost. I still think he ought to come out right away. Tonight.’

Mr Parr said nothing for a minute. The various expressions that had crossed over his face since she first burst into his office had mingled into one overall look of panic. Inside his waistcoat his heart was hopping about like a frog. ‘Tell me, Miss Lomas,’ he said, and he took a little backward skip as if to get away from the sound of his own voice. ‘Tell me! How do you think the local people will take to the notion of my having bought the place?’ He looked very perturbed.

Miss Lomas was quite unperturbed. She gave a sidelong look at him.

‘How are they to know you didn’t buy it long ago!’ she said. Mr Parr gave her an uneasy look. Miss Lomas hurried on. ‘Anyway why should anyone know your business until we are good and ready to let them know.’ She drew herself up proudly. ‘It was not for nothing that I always preserved the privacy of Brook Farm. What more natural than that now, with Miss Garret in a home and Christy gone off that you would have to be here a lot – and your nephews likewise. It will take a bit of time to counteract the impression you gave by your former indifference but no one will question what you do, if you go about it gradually. You must however start to show some interest straight away, to walk around the fields, be seen attending to mearings and gates at first, before later going a bit further. If one of your nephews, the young fellow I met, was to show an interest too and be seen cutting a few hedges, or painting the gates, in no time at all it would be thought natural that he’d sleep here as well in order to get an early start in the mornings with so much to be done.’ She stopped short to ponder some problems she couldn’t take time to explain. ‘On second thought, I think he had better not come out tonight, but wait till he’s been remarked paying an odd visit, or eating an odd meal here. Do you get me?’ She gave him a wink. ‘And from that,’ she cried, her excitement rising, ‘it would be a small step for the girls to spend a few days of the summer here – making it seem like a little holiday. Oh, how wonderful it would be, for all concerned to have them here,’ she cried, clasping her hands over her chest, so that in the dark, it seemed for a moment that once again she was the big goose-bosomed woman of long ago. ‘Summer is not far off, you know,’ she warned, ‘and you know what the summers are like out here. You could eventually all come and go as you wished. I’m sure your sister would benefit from a change. As for you!’ She looked at him so penetratingly that the whole cast of her thought was for a moment darkened. ‘Oh dear, isn’t it a pity you couldn’t have bought the place long ago,’ she said. ‘Think of how different everything would have been!’

There was such a note of regret in her voice that they both sighed. ‘My dear Miss Lomas,’ said Mr Parr, ‘Brook Farm in the old days would have been far too grand for the like of me!’

‘Nonsense!’ said Miss Lomas. ‘And even if that was the case, you can’t say it’s too grand for you now.’

Unfortunately at that moment, her eye caught the glint of goldleaf on a fragment of a Crown Derby saucer that was stopping a mousehole near the door, and she recalled all the good times which had gone. ‘Oh, poor Brook Farm!’ she said again and this time tears gushed into her eyes.

‘You really love the place, don’t you Miss Lomas?’ Mr Parr said, profoundly struck by her grief.

Miss Lomas made no attempt to wipe away her tears. She just looked into his. ‘Don’t you?’ she asked.

Mr Parr peered around. His reply was non-committal but Miss Lomas could read him like a book. ‘I suppose it would do no harm to start repairing the ravages at once,’ he said, ‘or at least put a stop to the inroads of decay.’

Halfway down Miss Lomas’s cheek a tear dried up and did not fall. ‘That’s the right spirit,’ she said.

It was now so dark inside the house that instinctively Mr Parr moved towards the door. Miss Lomas followed. Outdoors there was still a little light, at least in the sky, and against it Brook Farm reared up in all the strength of its hand-cut granite stone. It was, indeed, a gem, and for all the decay within, it was as if some concept of beauty had outlived its execution in perishable form. As for the land, was not the earth at all times indestructible? Across the dark fields it was no longer possible to see the copse of conifers that marked out the cemetery. But Miss Lomas no longer felt her interest in the cemetery so obsessive, or her appointment with it so imminent. She turned eagerly to Mr Parr. ‘I did not ask about the girls at all,’ she cried apologetically. ‘How are they? They must be young ladies by now. Dear me. We must make great haste if we are to have the place suitable for them. It is so important for young ladies that their background be as gracious as possible. Oh, it will be really wonderful to have them here. It will be just like the old days – only gayer.’ As she saw Mr Parr seemed to falter, she caught his arm. ‘It is not money that makes a house into a home,’ she said, ‘it is the presence of people. I wish I had a glass of wine to offer you, so that we might celebrate this happy solution to our difficulties.’

As if he felt giddy, Mr Parr seemed to reel slightly. ‘Is it wise to go so fast?’ he asked nervously. Miss Lomas swept aside such timidity.

‘If we are to be ready for the summer, we must start at once,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, I suppose. I’ll be up at dawn, astir with the birds.’