Angel O'Connor

Angel O’Connor

Chapter 1

I was watering a profusion of daisies when my father came and broke me the news. He was sweating - the sun glowed warmly in our front rooms of an afternoon and as he had been standing curiously vacant on the doorstep for a while, it had almost made his eyes run: for when you stare, thinking of things entirely distant, they forget to close. Poor man. He had always to wear his black coat whatever the degree of heat.
"Yes Papa", I said, slightly bewildered. "What is it that you have been slow in telling me? Shall I refill my can or are you ready for me?"
He coughed a little and wiped his brow with a sleeve. This surprised. As children we had always been taught never to use clothing for anything but wearing and respecting.
"Come inside", he said, lowly and frowning.
When we were both seated on the hall settle because that was immediately coolest, I sitting firmly on my hands to stop their tremble - he spoke distractedly and almost like a churchman resonating, tolling like a hollow bell about our passage.
"Angel I have found a position for you ... through my friend Graves, his son actually. You’re to be an assistant to Mrs Davis, the housekeeper at Abbeyfield. She's a very competant woman, smiles like sunlight my friend says.
That is odd,I thought, for a woman in her profession,. To be so sanguine.
"I believed you had forgotten, Papa, about my so-called affliction. I hoped I might just grow older and go unnoticed until death".
"We don't want..." he continued, "The village is stifling besides...my friends sons friend is in urgent need of assistance with his domestic arrangements."
"A servant! Is that what I'm to be?"
"No, a kind of apprentice. Mrs davis has been made aware of your circumstances, your education"
"You've met her?"
"A sample of your handiwork was submitted to her and approved."
My father stirred most uneasily and suddenly I felt my feet go numb as if the cool flags were entering into them and squeezing waves of frigidity up my legs.
"I will do whatever you say," which was all that could be said. I wish my father had looked up from the brown box seat into my face and shown me whatever honesty nestled in his face because the untidy summit of his head was a blank. He had bowed so low and mumbly that I had become the taller.
"Good, that's good," he said. "Your mother knows more details and will tell you at tea. She's not here presently...she's out visiting."
Of course I knew this. He was signing his exit with vacillation and drivel but then a great surprise. I saw his normally freezing hand rise and grapple my shoulder but not an icicle, it was a fire-brand. Then to accompany the dramatic gesture, he shot up straight and stared stark into my eyes.
"Angel," said my meek and beloved father, "you will be away temporarily. I think the change may help. I have plans for later."
A gray wisp of hair brushed his nose, so like a tousled child, I thought. I love you Papa. What is this, really? My hands replied. As I withdrew them from under my skirt they shook and rumbled and merely held flat before me they rippled like ripe hay. How could they be of any use to any housekeeper, to any living being, to any sink or forge or work table. Even my shoes were wet from the garden. The can had shaken but a drop on the sorry flowers and a flood over me. Those vast eyes noticed my moist ones. It seemed so hard and Mama wouldn't hug me if I cried. If only I could smash my hands into subservience. No one could explain this turn about or the ailment or my father’s peculiar decisions. It just seemed like the beautiful sun had boiled us and now were thrown into the North Atlantic where it’s perishing cold. That shock. That shock.
Now he rubbed his sticky hands along his trousers and flailed from the uncrowded spot, blue behind the burning front door. Then I could hear a procession of doors neatly closing, the rattle of pens, a faint clearing cough, a cat’s claw on the stone floor.
"Prissie."I buried my tremulous unforgiven hands in the puffy fur of our sweet grey cat. Her purring said to me my touch was pleasure for some, if ones sole occupation was the searching out of sensations comfortable and unproductive.
I carried her to my bedroom which was ill lit, a box for me and my younger sister. Annabel had gone to pay calls with Mama but left a little drawing on my bed. It was a haggard witch stooping toward a faceless black cat. A strange subject this was considering the merriment and placidness of Annabel's nature and , of course, her angelic physique. Prissie still crooned beneath my vibrations, like a trapped fly humming in a web. I kissed the fur, sneezed. Tiny droplets sprayed the fresh ink, rendering Annabel's ghoul even more sinister.
I lay down to think. Normally I preferred to ramble in the garden but it was hot. My hands were unflatteringly brown. Could I will their shivering to subside? Maybe - so I held them high, the pair of intractable, vile paws and as the blood surged backwards they stilled and looked skeletal in the gloom. I wondered why people considered this tremor a handicap if all I desired from life was a studious contemplation. I would never marry but rather mind the house, manage the school. Papa had spoken as though he suddenly preferred my absence, even if 'plans' were afoot. Mama - tell me.
"Angel, where are the pies?"
I must have slept because mother materialized without sound. Her hand clasped the door-knob and her indoor shoes were on meaning she with Annabel had returned home some moments ago.
"Angel, have you been in the kitchen not at all this morning? I remember I left instructions for the baking..."
Annabel's half-shadowed face bobbed up. "Prissie, dear Pris - Where's my sketch, Angel? Did you like it?"
"Annie, I'm speaking," said Mother, tersely. "Up you get, Angel. Come down and wash. It's musty in here - smells of cat.'
Mama smiled I think. It was even darker now, perhaps almost evening.
"Wilhemine has been sent to Fitzgeralds. I suppose I mustn't expect you to contribute, pastries require manual precision."
I sat up, coughed and declared: "Father's told me."
"Hmm. He has indeed"
"I dug some weeds so felt tired and came here to be quiet."
Annabel dropped Prissie through the open window onto our walnut tree. It was its luxuriant foliage that dimmed our room.
"Come along then girls." Mother was short of stature but not fat, square-faced and her greeny eyes sagged at the corners. She had married my father late after satisfactory living arrangements were made to deform. Her brother clergyman passed away and so his living and so her place of address.
Child -rearing and cossetting weighed unnaturally upon her, I felt, particularly those times when my cries for consolation floated unacknowledged on the night winds.
The details of my employment or usage were not spelled out that tea-time or any subsequent occasion. It happened by the way that some hints clad me in half understanding. Mr Fitzgerald, the grocer, mentioned my coming "sponsorship". He'd been led through the portals of my parent's intentions by Minne our servant who'd warned him not to expect me in the shop any furthur. I drop things, thats true, though Annabel's flighty minded - she'll not be a good shopper. Mama did specify that my role as companion-cousin to Mrs Davis who found life isolating at Abbeyfield due to the young masters being absent abroad many months. And the general maids were well unable to hold conversations on a level to satisfy her minds yearnings. When a carter told me this, I hmphed and said - I'm young, inexperienced, what can we talk of... general household matters? Cosmic speculations? He was nervous about my quaking,though,and stalked away to his wagon.
The morning the man came with another cart, me mere baggage to deliver to Mrs Davis,into her aproned bosom. PAPA LAY ASIDE A PRIVATE STUDENT NAMED Elijah Quirk in deference to my departure which I hoped was a sad event for him. We shared an interest in geography. That was all. We jested, we sparred. He commiserrated over my nervous affliction, (or was it organic, devils work, the biblical mark?) No doctors knew. One specialist had been intrigued but greedy.... his expertise no longer affordable, it bubbled to nothing.
With one hand, papa held wide the flaking yard-door whilst my trunk was heaved into the conveyance, and with the other smoothed his locks, conscious of dignity this day. And silence. When I moved to kiss his cheek he gripped my wrists like irons.
"We'll stop this one day," he said. The vice felt as cruel as a contraption. My tremor died momentarily. i made fists not
tears. Annbael lingered too, slipped me a letter. God, I was being abandoned. The sinking faces of my family moved me like a thunderclap. Mother's pre-occupation elsewhere, the kind of indecipherable nature of my appointment, its purpose, its duration?
"I'll see you in a few weeks". I said to Annabel.
"You can meet my parrot then". (A new pet had been promised.)
"Argentina?" We'd agreed on its name.
"Guard it from Priss."
You will never experience this, I thought as her pretty dimpled cheeks brushed against my buttons. I envisioned a frightful, flickering night-life for her, solitary in our bedroom. The restive bird, the snoring cat, the creaky tree, a father nearby snorting in his sleep and a mother choking prayers. The anguished, crippled sister becomes marginalia.
Annabel assured me I looked older in my travelling costume.
"Moss-green shall we call it."
"I look fine enough for the waltz..."
"Yes,yes." Annabel rejoined eagerly, failing to seize my ironical tone.
Our house was modest in size and decoration. One room, the library, had been designated classroom for ten to fifteen boys of humble backgrounds, boys who would otherwise have stayed ignorant and condemned to an existence as intellectually bald as a baby's crown. I glimpsed Mama's blurred face at the window, however instead of waving a handkerchief in adieu, the white of her headdress flashed as she turned away from the drama without.
"Please support Mother," I reminded Annabel. "Her brood is shrinking". Father caught the remark and struck out with a souring physiognomy. Why did I feel this carefree when threatened by an unknown. Why strong enough to speak forthrightly? I had languished under the wing for far too long, the cuckoo in another birds nest. But instead of usurpation the common garden birds were heaving me out and down to a rupture of bones.I suppose I should squawk my protest.
Heraldic beeches flanked the serpentine drive that we snaked along nearer and nearer to my destiny. Soft rain fell and unleashed such alluring botanical aromas as to rouse my basic forest self. Dressed in green I may have repulsed the raindrops like a leaf or drunk them as the porous earth. My need for experience mirrored the earths need for replenishing rain. All at once the fresh scent gave way to a brackish one of bogs, algae and damsel-fly as into view loomed the rush-trimmed curves of a magnificent lake furrowed by weather. Beyond it rose a spectral jumble of turrets, cloister, stairways and urns, a staggering mass of castle like a prostrate behemoth snuggled in the misty landscape with the appropriateness of a protruberant root. This was Abbeyfield. This was nether flowerbed, fireside, pitcher, village street. This was nothing I had known. As the rain at last began to trickle acros my eyes, I felt the strange, cloud-like vision swim incredibly, it swam before me as our wagon trundled through an immense gothic arch approaching the front.
An entourage of retainers met me on the gravel in front of the steps, many of them, steeply bridging to the studded mediaeval door. Central to the group, I spotted someone who appeared to be Mrs Davis, of round and rubbery proportions and kneading her hands, her head quite set off by an assortment of lace hanging limply in the rain. I noticed a cook in a cooks cap, several housemaids, grooms and gardeners, some identifiable through their headgear like badges of employment. One lad held on tightly to the collar of the most enormous shaggy looking dog I had ever set eyes upon, a black demon of a thing with a tongue the size of a calfs and leonine paws. Was it Cerberus, was the lake that infernal river? As it shook boisterously showering droplets from its coat a flight of moth-like blackbirds took neatly to wing from one tower as if every citizen of the realm must acknowledge my arrival, ordinary though it seemed and water-logged. The birds circled a welcome fit for a new mistress. At the imposing front doors! Why was I not shunted into the back with the vegetable hamper? Later, when I mentioned this to Mrs Davis she assured me that they acted under the masters instructions. Accord Miss O’Connor the ‘full treatment, the ‘guard of honour’he had ordered them. I believed I would faint with so many pairs of eyes trained on me. As if a mind reader Mrs Davis said:
“Quite a welcome the weather has managed to put on for thee.”
Just then a cleft in the clouds broke over our heads and the rain dwindled to nothing. The slightly damp reception committee sidled towards me as soon as I stepped down from the conveyance and introduced themselves to me one by one. I took to Janet immediately one of two chambermaids and shorter than me which evened out my disability. I wore a pair of elegant soft gloves to embarrass my tremor into anonymity but of course as I shook everyones hand they couldn’t help but notice the little spurts of shivering.
“Come now, don’t be frightened of us,” soothed the oddly lean cook. I petted the dog called ‘Bowser’and it tried to eat me as its little boy handler whined commands. Its main task was to run with the Master and sniff out poachers and to guard his bedroom door when he was in residence. Away on the ‘grand tour’ they said, it had been two years but he had kept in regular correspondence with the lawyer Gibson who ran his business and estate affairs, admirably and was too boot a very ‘personable gentleman’ according to Mrs Davis, my walking dictionary, encyclopaedia and almanac all rolled into one.