‘I did not.’
‘It’s a legend,’ Fogarty explains. ‘It illustrates the truth. It does not tell it, Miss Fogarty and myself would say. Your own religion might take it differently.’
‘Don’t you live and learn?’ says Cready.
There is a silence for some moments in the kitchen. Then Brigid, stirring the saucepan of milk on the range as Miss Fogarty has instructed her, says:
‘I wonder does Father Horan know that?’
‘God, I’d say he would all right.’ Cready wags her head, lending emphasis to this opinion. There isn’t much relating to theological matters that eludes Father Horan, she says.
‘Oh, right enough,’ agrees Fogarty. ‘The priests will run this country yet. If it’s not one crowd it’s another.’ He explains to the maids that the Legend of the True Cross has come into the house by way of the governess. It is a typical thing, he says, that a Protestant Englishwoman would pass the like of that on. Old Hugh wouldn’t have considered it suitable; and the present Pulvertafts have been long enough away from England to consider it unsuitable also. He’d guess they have anyway; he’d consider that true.
Miss Fogarty, still idle in her chair by the range, nods her agreement. She states that, legend or not, she does not care for stuff like that. In lower tones, and privately to her brother, she says she is surprised that he repeated it.
‘It’s of interest to the girls,’ he apologizes. ‘To tell the truth, you could have knocked me down when she told me in the nursery.’
*
‘The boulders from the ridge maybe used for walls and chipping?’ inquires Mr Pulvertaft of his estate manager.
‘It is a distance to carry boulders, sir.’
‘So it is, but we must continue to occupy these men, Erskine. Time is standing still for them.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The two men pace together on a lawn in front of the house, walking from one circular rose-bed to the next, then turning and reversing the procedure. It is here that Mr Pulvertaft likes to discuss the estate with Erskine, strolling on the short grass in the mid-morning. When it rains or is too bitterly cold they converse instead in the great open porch of the house, both of them gazing out into the garden. The eyes of Mr Pulvertaft and Erksine never meet, as if by unspoken agreement. Mr Pulvertaft, though speaking warmly of Erskine’s virtues, fears him; and Erskine does not trust his eye to meet his master’s in case that conjunction, however brief, should reveal too much. Mr Pulvertaft has been a painless inheritor, in Erskine’s view; his life has been without hardship, he takes too easily for granted the good fortune that came his way.
‘The road,’ he is saying now, seeming to Erskine to make his point for him, ‘is our generation’s contribution to the estate. You understand me, Erskine? A Pulvertaft planted Abbey Wood, another laid out these gardens. Swift came here, did you know that, Erskine? The Mad Dean assisted in the planning of all these lawns and shrubberies.’
‘So you told me, sir.’
It is Erskine’s left arm that is missing but he considers the loss as serious as if it had been his right. He is an Englishman, stoutly made and once of renowned strength, still in his middle age. His temper is short, his disposition unsentimental, his soldier’s manner abrupt; nor is there, beneath that vigorous exterior, a gentler core. Leading nowhere, without a real purpose, the estate road is unnecessary and absurd, but he accepts his part in its creation. It is ill fortune that people have starved because a law of nature has failed them, it is ill fortune that he has lost a limb and seen a military career destroyed: all that must be accepted also. To be the manager of an estate of such size and importance is hardly recompense for the glories that might have been. He has ended up in a country that is not his own, employing men whose speech he at first found difficult to understand, collecting rents from tenants he does not trust, as he feels he might trust the people of Worcestershire or Durham. The Pulvertaft family – with the exception of Mr Pulvertaft himself – rarely seek to hold with him any kind of conversation beyond the formalities of greeting and leave-taking. Stoically he occupies his position, ashamed because he is a one-armed man, yet never indulging in melancholy, for this he would condemn as weakness.
‘There is something concerning the men, sir.’
‘Poor fellows, there is indeed.’
‘Something other, sir. They have turned ungrateful, sir.’
‘Ungrateful?’
‘As well to keep an eye open for disaffection, sir.’
‘Good God, those men are hardly fit for that.’
‘They bite the hand that feeds them, sir. They’re reared on it.’
He speaks in a matter-of-fact voice. It is the truth as he recognizes it; he sees no point in dissembling for politeness’ sake. He watches while Mr Pulvertaft nods his reluctant agreement. He does not need to remind himself that this is a landowner who would have his estate a realm of heaven, who would have his family and his servants, his tenants and all who work for him, angels of goodness. This is a landowner who expects his own generosity of spirit to beget such generosity in others, his unstinted patronage to find a reflection in unstinted gratitude. But reality, as Erskine daily experiences, keeps shattering the dream, and may shatter it irrevocably in the end.
They speak of other matters, of immediate practicalities. Expert and informed on all the subjects raised, Erskine gives the conversation only part of his attention, devoting the greater part to the recently arrived governess. He has examined her in church on the four occasions there have been since she joined the household. Twenty-five or –six years old, he reckons, not pretty yet not as plain as the plain one among the Pulvertaft girls. Hair too severely done, features too nervous, clothes too dowdy; but all that might be altered. The hands that hold the hymn book open before her are pale as marble, the fingers slender; the lips that open and close have a hint of voluptuousness kept in check; the breast that rises and falls has caused him, once or twice, briefly to close his eyes. He would marry her if she would have him, and why should she not, despite the absence of an arm? As the estate manager’s wife she would have a more significant life than as a governess for ever.
‘Well, I must not detain you longer,’ Mr Pulvertaft says. ‘The men are simple people, remember, rough in their ways. They may find gratitude difficult and, you know, I do not expect it. I only wish to do what can be done.’
