[Revolutions 03] The Newton Letter Read Free

maid, and, scribbling within a
crystal cave, myself, a haggard-eyed Damon.
    I had them spotted for patricians from the start.
The big house, Edward’s tweeds, Charlotte’s fine-boned
slender grace that the dowdiest of clothes could not mask, even Ottilie’s awkwardness, all this seemed the
unmistakable stamp of their class. Protestants, of course,
landed, the land gone now to gombeen men and compulsory
purchase, the family fortune wasted by tax,
death duties, inflation. But how bravely, how beautifully
they bore their losses! Observing them, I understood
that breeding such as theirs is a preparation not
for squiredom itself, but for that distant day, which for
the Lawlesses had arrived, when the trappings of glory
are gone and only style remains. All nonsense, of course,
but to me, product of a post-peasant Catholic upbringing,
they appeared perfected creatures. Oh, don’t accuse
me of snobbery. This was something else, a fascination
before the spectacle of pure refinement. Shorn of the
dull encumbrances of wealth and power, they were free
to be purely what they were. The irony was, the form
of life their refinement took was wholly familiar to me:
wellington boots, henhouses, lumpy sweaters. Familiar,
but, ah, transfigured. The nicety of tone and gesture to
which I might aspire, they achieved by instinct, unwittingly.
Their ordinariness was inimitable.
    Sunday mornings were a gala performance at Ferns.
At twenty to ten, the bells pealing down in the village,
a big old-fashioned motor car would feel its way out of
the garage. They are off to church. An hour later they
return, minus Edward, with Charlotte at the wheel.
Wisps of tiny music from the radio in the kitchen come
to me. Charlotte is getting the dinner ready—no, she is
preparing a light lunch. Not for them surely the midday feeds of my childhood, the mighty roast, the steeped
marrowfat peas, the block of runny ice-cream on its cool
perch on the bathroom windowsill. Edward tramps up
the hill, hands in his pockets, shoulders rolling. In front
of the house he pauses, looks at the broken fanlight, and
then goes in, the door shuts, the train moves on, over
the bridge.
    My illusions about them soon began, if not to crumble,
then to modify. One day I struck off past the orchard
into the lands at the back of the house. All round were
the faint outlines of what must once have been an ornate
garden. Here was a pond, the water an evil green, overhung
by a sadness of willows. I waded among hillocks
of knee-high grass, feeling watched. The day was hot,
with a burning breeze. Everything swayed. A huge
bumble bee blundered past my ear. When I looked back,
the only sign of the house was a single chimney pot
against the sky. I found myself standing on the ruins of
a tennis court. A flash of reflected sunlight caught my
eye. In a hollow at the far side of the court there was a
long low glasshouse. I stumbled down the bank, as others
in another time must have stumbled, laughing, after
a white ball rolling inexorably into the future. The door
of the glasshouse made a small sucking sound when I
opened it. The heat was a soft slap in the face. Row
upon row of clay pots on trestle tables ran the length of
the place, like an exercise in perspective, converging at
the far end on the figure of Charlotte Lawless standing
with her back to me. She wore sandals and a wide green skirt, a white shirt, her tattered sun hat. I spoke, and
she turned, startled. A pair of spectacles hung on a cord
about her neck. Her fingers were caked with clay. She
dabbed the back of a wrist to her forehead. I noticed the
tiny wrinkles around her eyes, the faint down on her
upper lip.
    I said I hadn’t known the hothouse was here, I was
impressed, she must be an enthusiastic gardener. I was
babbling. She looked at me carefully. “It’s how we make
our living,” she said. I apologised, I wasn’t sure for
what, and then laughed, and felt foolish.