Leila: Further in the Life and Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman

3

The moonlight gone. And a cock crowing waking me. A wind. My mind aswirl with the most indiscreet of dreams. Dressed as a bishop I was having it off with Lois attired as a nun back in her Dublin studio clacking her castanets. Reached into my side table for my piss pot. Kneel in bed to avoid freezing. And then freezing as one waited for one’s fierce engorgement to subside. What bliss to take a long and most relieving pee. But good almighty grief, feel my knees growing wetly cold. Dear god in the very worst of worst horrors. One’s warm piss is flooding out a crack in the bottom of this bloody pot to soak frigidly into one’s mattress.

Of course frozen out of my wits, Crooks woke me just after dawn. From my nightmare of an arctic mid Atlantic ocean sinking. I had not the heart to tell him to bugger off and let me sleep. Until I was sorely tempted to do just that as the wet paper and sticks he attempted to light smoked up through the soggy turf in the fireplace. Crooks pumping the bellows, puffing out massive clouds of smoke, which joining the billows gusting back down the cold chimney, one could hardly breathe or see across the room.

‘Breakfast’s on the way and have this alight blazing now any second Master Reginald.’

‘O god Crooks, do please leave it. I’ll go down to breakfast. And do please dispose of this cracked chamber pot.’

‘It would be that one Dingbats again.’

‘You must I think Crooks please see she is more careful.’

‘I’ve done everything in my power to train that one up. She’ll swear on a stack of Bibles that the pot wasn’t cracked when she put it there. Set this fire as well so that the devil having a barbecue in hell wouldn’t get it alight.’

It was always hard to estimate the degree of madness any individual staff inmate had reached, being as they were all going mad together. The one true cooperation they genuinely shared. And the only sane consistent thing one could depend upon. But with the future prospects for Andromeda Park already so bleak the addition of the likes of Dingbats made it look dispiritingly quite uncomfortable indeed.

Darcy Dancer dressed. A thick herringbone tweed jacket and cavalry twill trousers. A thick cotton cricket shirt, two layers of woollen underwear. Tiptoe now out in the hall. Avoid alerting a new disaster. Only barely escaping this morning’s asphyxiation. And the frostbite while the windows were wide open for my room to clear of smoke. Good god who’s that. That voice. Crooks mumbling down the hall around the turning to my mother’s apartments.

‘Yes my dear Delia, your royalness, my true and only blessed virgin, I shall be back shortly, madam, with the hot towels, to dry your back.’

My god Crooks is now taking the most diabolical risqué liberties in his ravings. As in the same way, having detested the sight and sound of Miss von B while she was here, raising her to beatified and saintly social heights while apparently demoting the memory of my mother to something regrettably verging on the lascivious.

My breakfast tray brought upstairs by Dingbats left abandoned on the landing. For a host of rats to eat, no doubt. The fire mercifully at my back in the dining room.

Sun glowing faint gold across the whitened landscape. A magpie, feathers shiny black and white, dancing up and down the branches of an orchard apple tree. Pigeons about. Await breakfast. Cold stiff fingered. Write out my purposes in my old blue clasp book. To inspect the horses, the farmyard, garden, old saw mill, the grove of beeches. As one hopes to see the mate of the magpie out in the orchard to avoid any ill luck of seeing only one. Some cheer to find Sexton’s selection of nosegays laid out at my place. Choose the tiny braided bouquet of snowdrops. But it has already occurred to me even before the day has hardly begun that I shall have to find a very rich, preferably from brewing, heiress to marry. To pay for the repairs to floors, ceilings, halls, roof, never mind the plumbing, or replacement of the long disused electric wiring. Which latter at least, one is relieved to know, will still mercifully long remain unconnected to any supply. Otherwise instead of widespread light at one’s fingertips there would be wholesale electrocution.

Darcy Dancer attempting to catch larger sight of Leila who held back nearly an arm’s length as she served. The lace at the wrist of her uniform quite soiled. And upon her hand there seemed two words written with numerals in indelible pencil. When I said good morning upon entering she made no reply. Keeps constantly behind my back. And I must say Crooks snapping his fingers at her did irritate one. But then as she chose a moment as I was turned looking out the window to lift a platter from the sideboard, I found, as I suddenly turned back, that she was staring at me. Her face flushing crimson as she turned away and hurried pantrywards. It could have been that with copious cups of tea, I embarrassingly devoured four eggs, six slices of bacon, several slices of toast and marmalade, one jug of cream, all preceded by a quart of apple juice and large bowl of porridge. As any sensible person in his right mind would, in present conditions and circumstances. But she could think me unreasonably greedy. And now with Crooks growling out to her in the pantry.

‘More toast, more toast, more toast.’

In his own trembling inadequacy Crooks in pouring my tea put a good bit of it in my saucer and on the table. Which he ordered the poor new girl to mop up.

‘Forgive me Master Reginald, it’s been a bit of a night with hunting rats high and low, but tomorrow will have us right.’

Leila returning with a rack of perfectly browned toast to my side, in murmuring my thank you I deliberately turned to look up at her. The brightness of the snow outside revealed her astonishing flashing eyes. The strange quiet beauty of their oriental cast beneath her brows. The iris around the pupil instead of appearing black as it first seemed, was a glowing deep mossy green flecked with blue. And the longest black lashes I’ve ever seen. Her forehead and cheeks of the whitest smoothest skin. Her soft, full but unsmiling lips. Her slenderness. And in her black uniform she did seem so hungry and cold and even, god forbid, consumptive.

A malodorous sewer smell in the basement hall. Edna Annie tried to get up to bow as I entered her warm little room and I had to hold her and help her back into her chair but up again she stood, her white hair with a red ribbon coffied and brushed up from her birdlike skull. Her gnarled fingers busy as ever knitting and grabbing me strongly by the arm. Making this supreme effort to leave her bedridden bed. Hugging me, the tears were welling and dropping from her old pale blue eyes.

‘Ah Master Darcy you’re hitting the ceiling with your head now. A gossoon no more, god love you. Sure I haven’t been able to make soap now. My days are numbered. Out there soon under the sod.’

‘Nonsense, you look so marvellous.’

‘Ah flattery will get you somewhere.’

Taking a peek in the kitchen a hot breeze blew at me out the door. The nervously collected snugly comfortable staff jumping to their feet at the snap of Crooks’ fingers. Dingbats with her cheeks bulging out with cake. The rats had not upset her appetite. One could see the wooden backs and seats of the chairs shining with the months and months of polishing from so many human bottoms and shoulders. Table centre, large pots of tea, plates stacked with biscuits, cake, barmbrack. Mounds of golden butter. Pots of jams. Clearly no deprivation or starvation was going on below stairs. Kettles steaming on the stove. Blazing fire in the fireplace. Mouths chewing. Awful smell of cigarettes. Frankly it looked like a feast was going on.

Climbing back up the servants’ stairs. Damp everywhere one looked. To push open this mahogany door to the old schoolroom. To step inside. My books as I opened them, their pages softened by moisture, nearly fell apart. The cobwebbed maps peeling down from the wall. Abandoned crayons and pencils. So many hours spent here. My dear Mr Arland. His sad yet noble life. The only man aside from Sexton and Uncle Willie upon whom I ever felt I could depend. Young as he must have been as my tutor, he so ably yet so gently led me into the old ways of the world.

As I departed in the front hall, I passed Leila, the only one not at the feast, on her knees cleaning ash out of the grate. One is now even more frightened of speaking than she must be of being spoken to. God one must get on. Sympathy for others in a household has a way of depriving one of convenience. My cap and scarf still miraculously where I last left them with my boots in the small vestibule inside the door. Shake off the dust and push my feet into my father’s Wellingtons. Take a walking stick. Go out.

Darcy Dancer, blowing his clouds of breath out in the crisp cold air and kicking his feet through the snow. Stand looking out across the whitened parkland. The river flowing darkly between its banks. The woods beyond up the hill. How can it continue. The massive roof to stay atop this house. One’s spirit did crash down as one saw a new crack in the front hall and the plaster crumbling. Rain stains on the front hall tiles. The food pours down all these throats. The worst that can happen is I die. At least there is no shortage of graves. Lie next to my mother. But I did take heart again at the brief sight of Leila at the grate. Was tempted to summon her to the estate office. Mention the subject of a medical consultation with Dr Wellbeing in the town. And ask her. Would you please smile so that I can see your teeth.

Go now making a fresh path of footsteps towards the orchard. The snow dry and ice patches crackling underfoot. I would in Dublin be at this moment taking a mid morning coffee in the lounge of the Hibernian Hotel waiting for the likes of Rashers Ronald to come eagerly sauntering in. With some new plan for making a fortune or at least a fiver by lunchtime. And to dissect the previous night’s partying. And hear his very English voice say bash on regardless. His face flushed with new further and better particulars of plans to marry a rich widow. And then his octaves dropping to his confidential whisper as he inevitably wanted the loan of a fiver till teatime. He would I’m sure tell me to pawn Andromeda Park, land, stock and chattels. And one supposes he would be right.

Push open this barred squealing iron gate. The apple tree branches weighted down. There ahead the potting shed. Smoke rising out of Sexton’s tiny chimney jutting above the wall. The world I left here. Cows gobbling up the juicy autumn apples. Chasing to catch fat frisky lambs as they would run for their tiny tail twitching lives. This old green door, brass handle worn so shiny. Well oiled hinges. The comfort inside of ancient smells. His Latin lists pinned upon the walls. This place in which Sexton offers up the toil of his life to beget beauty, bent at his bench whistling happily, gently lovingly packing his plant roots in turf mould.

‘Ah good morning Master Darcy. I see you’ve come safely across the tundra. This weather’s great for tracking the poachers. But now as soon as the frost’s gone from the ground, I’m going to plant out in honour of your return, the greatest avenue over there of Acer Pseudoplatanus Brilliantissimum.’

‘Dear me Sexton, that is awfully thoughtful of you. But you must let me in on the secret, my Latin is awfully rusty this morning.’

‘Ah the noble sycamore, Master Darcy.’

‘I do wish that appellation Master might be dropped, Sexton. It leaves me looking rather too young in a task I feel requires one to seem a little older.’

‘Ah it’s the habit of it. But certainly it’s only right and proper, as gaffer you’d be now the viceroy, hospodar, pasha, tsar, and undisputed Squire Lord of Andromeda Park.’

‘Well we needn’t be quite so extravagant about it, the mere word sir will do.’

‘At your command sir.’

‘And saluting Sexton is certainly not necessary.’

‘Ah now this morning you’d not be I see in the happiest of moods.’

‘Well I have just cause. The sewers.’

‘I know sir. Conduits burst, pipes blocked up all over kingdom come. Not a drain working. A blessing it’s all frozen by the cold. Everything on the blink. But for us born here in Ireland, where god has long looked down on us smiling, and kept us safe from the world’s scourges and disasters, its floods, earthquakes, poisonous spiders and snakes, and from the foul diseases of impurity, we should remain truly thankful.’

‘One is quite aware of our gifts from god but somehow it’s still all quite bad enough. And I should be glad if it does not ever get worse. God did however send us famine.’

‘Only to remind us of our favoured position.’

‘I see.’

‘Well it’s not the half of it now, I was only getting you ready to hear the finale. Two old cows who should have known better frozen stiff as statues as they lay down by the lake to sleep. We’ll have to wait till they thaw to move them.’

‘I’ll have the agent buy in new stock.’

‘Let me buy the stock Master Darcy, ah sorry that slip. Sir it is. And never mind that agent. Up there in the estate office like it was his own private preserve, Napoleon calling for that Leila to fetch cups of tea all morning when he wasn’t at the whisky in the wine cellar.’

‘Where exactly did the agent find her Sexton.’

‘Now you’ve got me there. I’d only know he’s very sweet on her. Comes stealing my indoor flowers no less to present her with. He found that other one of the frizzy hair in the scullery of a pub, breaking so many glasses and dishes the poor old publican was ready to pay to have her taken away at any price. The agent he’ll lie low now you’re back. But sine dubio the esprit de corps of the household is very low. You might say, it’s made no one any saner and that’s a fact. I wouldn’t let them cut or remove a thorn tree, there beyond, in case it would bring any more ill luck.’

‘Perhaps one should raise wages Sexton.’

‘Ah god abandon that good intention straight off.’

‘Well at the moment there are no wages, so why not raise them.’

‘Ah I like your existentialism.’

‘I’m afraid, Sexton, I don’t know what on earth that is.’

‘It’s what at this very moment they’re thinking and practising in Paris, the very latest that’s what it is.’

‘Good god, Paris. I’d be better advised at this moment to know what they’re thinking and practising here in Andromeda Park.’

‘Now meaning no disrespect to Ireland, I’d say what you need now to add to your intellectual might is a trip to the cafes of that city.’

‘I see.’

‘Ah the social, cerebral, not to mention noological activity of that capital would give you a style that would make them Dublin intellectuals cringe in shame of their backward concepts.’

‘Sexton I did not know you have been to Paris.’

‘Ah don’t mention the Champs Elysées to me. The soaring spires of Notre Dame. Mere commonplace. The Prado.’

Proceeding at last to the stables it having taken till nearly lunch time to extricate oneself out of the intellectual ferment of Sexton’s potting shed. One does feel however that just as sure as the Prado is not in Paris, one was as certain that Sexton had a loyal heart. And he noticed with pleasure my selection of his nosegay of snowdrops.

Darcy Dancer walking down this familiar road. Just steep enough for a sledge to glide. But no time for pleasure. Not here even a day. Two cattle already dead. How dare the agent assume a romantic prerogative with one of my staff. An old trick to take advantage of an innocent menial. Awfully damn insolent. Play pop with him. Filthy minded type for whom the blessing of marriage is not enough. But he who is without sin fling the first stone. And I have on too numerous an occasion been so sordidly and disgracefully indulgent that my arm I fear, must remain stilled at my side. Carnal mindedness must be in everyone’s blood. Two defrockings in the family history, both of archbishops who had a difficulty to curb a taste in young boys. Plus my mother’s father and grandfather, old reprobates who had similar tastes for young girls. Especially those serving in the household.

Darcy Dancer at the bottom of the little incline. Crossing the bump of cobble stones beneath the snow. Hungry pigeons sheltering up under the eaves. Make a nice pie had one a shotgun to hand. Hay rake and ploughs rusting in a corner of the yard. Whoever it is alerts to my coming. Hear the noise of activity. Step through the mended, tottering and remended stable door. Puddles on the stable floor. Horse piss fumes. Cobwebs like lace ball gowns hanging from the ceiling. Faint smell of oats and strong stench of stable dung. A stall full of musty hay. Rusty leaking buckets. Standard here. Appalling.

‘Good morning, Master Reginald, and welcome home.’

‘Good morning, Slattery.’

‘I am getting it tidied up a bit here. It be a hardy old winter. Will you be hunting when the weather improves.’

‘Yes I shall.’

Slattery’s ear looking blue, chewed and flapped over and whitened at the edges. Where his son Foxy had nearly bitten and torn it off. The two reddened indented marks still on his skull where Foxy had struck him with a hammer. Intrepid Foxy Slattery. His fighting spirit never vanquished. Fought so at every authority. Indulged in every desecration. Introduced me to my early weaknesses of the flesh. Would ride any mount or steal the pennies off an old dead woman’s eyes. Under what part of the bleak blue sky does he rascally now go.

‘You’d be back staying a bit with us Master Reginald.’

‘Yes.’

‘Be a blessing when this hardship of a winter is over. Not been one like it in living memory.’

Head groom Slattery’s careful preamble to letting one know of the dead cows. Leading me to the news gently. Count the horses in their boxes. Petunia. Nutmeg. Molly. And my god, what’s that. Eighteen hands of giant black beast. Weaving back and forth. Hot red fierce burning eyes. Massive head and neck like a colossal snake looming in some dark jungle ready to strike.

‘Be careful there, Master Reginald that’s Midnight Shadow, I meant to warn you.’

The huge black stallion shooting out its head to snap its teeth at the bars. Nostrils flaring. Darcy Dancer jumping back. As its forelegs rear and smash against the teak door. Trembling the entire stable. The latch nearly breaking open.

‘You’d be best away out of here now, master Reginald. Before he has a go at the door. That savage has killed one old farmer already. And maimed a dozen. Kick you to death as soon as look at you. Daft. His mother was daft. His father half daft. And he is completely.’

The stallion turning in his stall. In the billows of rising straw, dung and dust. His immense quarters letting fly his hind legs north, south, east and west. Hoofs sending sparks off the walls. And finally crashing open the door of the stall.

‘Begorra he’s loose, get away out. Out now.’

The animal backing out of its stall kicking and bucking. The groom Luke grabbing a hay fork and shoving Darcy Dancer out of the door in front of him, slamming the outside stable door shut. The roars and hoofs slashing inside. Luke turning the knob to close the latch as hoofs crash at the other side. Stone chips hitting windows and then the panes of glass flying out into the snow.

‘This better hold the blackguard. Or we’ll be taking our next piss in purgatory.’

The stable door splintering in two as Luke jumps back. Another and another hoof comes crashing through. Screws flying out of the hinges in the rotted wood. The stallion, filling the doorway. Its chest heaving, blasts of breath out into the chill air. The black giant neck craning forward, its head lowered, teeth bared, as it charged.

‘Run for your life Master Reginald.’

The snow flying, the stallion pounding across the yard after Luke. The beast’s ears flat back. Hulking great head, jaws agape, bearing down as Luke turns jabbing with the hay fork. The animal’s head dodging the prongs and forelegs rearing to knock the fork flying out of Luke’s hands. Slattery shouting.

‘Call the dogs, call the dogs.’

Darcy Dancer letting a piercing whistle out into the air. Luke by the stable wall arms raised, jumping backwards seeking safety by the side of the rain barrel. The gutter pipe coming asunder, banging Luke’s head, as he slides stunned arse first into a deep snow drift covering the drain. Kern and Olav bounding round the house at the top of the road. Tails like rudders in the wind, steering them down into the yard. Henry and Thomas, who should have been out foddering the cattle, emerging from somewhere comfortable into the fray. And just as quickly seeing what it was about turning their backs inside again. A voice heard as the door slammed.

‘Begob I’m not sending my soul to heaven yet.’

Luke, one arm clutched over the edge of the frozen rain barrel, pulling himself up again against the wall. Kern leaping to bite the beast’s giant hind quarter. Olav sent flying with a hoof catching him on the shoulder. The stallion’s yellowed curving teeth tearing the shoulder out of Luke’s jacket. The graveyard is going to be put into use again sooner than one imagined.

‘He’ll have us all kilt Master Reginald.’

The black monster slipping on the stable cobbles. Kern’s fangs bared at its neck. Goes down on its haunches. Darcy Dancer tearing off his jacket. Rushing flinging it over the massive horse’s head. Luke squeezing and crouching further behind the rain barrel. The vast animal getting to its feet again. Turning blindly rearing round in a circle bucking in the air. The earth trembling, dogs barking.

‘Quick Master Reginald back inside now out of sight’

The two figures running for the door of the turf shed. Luke tugging, kicking and pounding on the door frozen shut. Oaths turning the sky pink. A final thump of Darcy Dancer’s shoulder smashing it open. Banging it closed behind them. Peering out a cobwebbed window.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I’m telling you Master Reginald, only a shotgun blasting a couple of times in each ear would put some manners on that black terror and then he’d eat you napkin and all.’

Darcy Dancer’s jacket hanging over the mighty beast’s one eye. That bucks its head left and right. And one’s best tweed coat goes fluttering down into the snow. Kern dodging and snapping around the stallion’s hoofs as it stands vertical on hind legs, bellowing, pawing at the sky. And lands again, feet asprawl on the snowy cobbles to turn looking around the yard. Just to see if there’s anything left to kill. A snort out its nostrils. A shake of its head at Kern, as it charges again. Another lash of its hoof at a limping Olav. Till its hind legs sending a lump of snow flying, the monster beast turns to gallop pounding away up the stable yard road. In a soaring leap clearing a five foot wall by two feet. Glistening black against the pearly parkland. Its legs reaching racing out into its snowy white miles of freedom.

Midnight Shadow

Would be

Better named

Morning Earthquake