fit to occupy. So what you are going to do, Lizzie, what I’m telling you to do, is to pretend that you think it more, much more, than awful grand.”
A rising laugh makes me push my face into my sleeve. As foreigners go, he’s unusual fast at picking things up. His problem—the big noke—is letting go when a thing is long done and over. There’s times he’ll get his whole fist round a delicate article and won’t drop it till he’s wrung all the sense out of it, and he holds it still, even if he knows it’s crushed or broke, or anyhows beyond repair.
“Lizzie, are you laughing?”
Laughter that’s sealed only builds and I think I might burst. I plonk back down on the bed and lift my shirts up to hide my face.
“Ya, you are laughing! What is so funny? Stop it! I said, stop it!”
“Oh, Frederick,” I says, and it all spills out of me, a peal. “Come here and let me kiss you.”
He lumbers over, confounded, and sits beside me.
“Frederick,” I says, “the house is much more than grand. It’s an effin’ castle!”
He frowns and studies my face for any hidden rigs.
“I’m serious! I just adore it!”
He grins and lets out a sigh and takes tight of me and kisses me. And for a moment now, it almost doesn’t matter that it’s her he really wants to be holding, that it’s her he’d prefer as his princess, for she isn’t here and won’t be coming back, and I’m the closest thing to her he can ever hope to get.
“You know something?” he says then, tears in his eyes but laughing too. “The Queen was right.”
“The Queen? About what?”
“About the Irish.”
“And what, pray tell, did the old hooer say about us?”
“That you’re an abominable people, none in the world better at causing distress.”
IV. Cross to Bear
Imprisoned, they have us, in their hospitality. Already here two days longer than planned. It’s my own fault for not being firmer with Frederick. I ought kick up more of a row.
At first I was worried about getting in the way. I didn’t want to walk in on top of anyone or trespass on their time. But, as it happens, I keep finding myself alone and lost and off the beaten course, in rooms that go into rooms, up and down and every which direction. My heart goes out to Jenny, having to govern such a monster, and I’ve come to admire her practice of going away to rest in case she might be tired later in the day, for I’ve learnt that a mere glance into the parlor is liable to dizzy you, for the depth. It certain can’t be work that drains her. Since our arrival I haven’t caught her doing anything but make work with her queer times. She has a joke: “Better a dry crust and manners at eight than fowl and vulgarity at five,” but in actual fact, she wouldn’t be content with crusts at any hour, and the maid is left bearing the brunt. Boiling up and bringing in and fettling about, the little creature attends to all of their little wants, and she does it on her own, too, with no others to aid her (for it seems that with servants, if not with any other portion of life, Jenny knows how to make a saving).
Ah, the poor wee puppet! The petty pocket! The pigwidgeon! Nim—I can’t deny it!—has succeeded in fascinating my attention. Despite my strict resolve to be cool in her company—“Don’t notice her,” I says to myself whenever she comes in—I always find myself flushed and susceptible. Whether it be the quiet show she makes of her modesty or the delicate manner with which she wields her influence, or her sad-sad-secret (now so-so-public) that cuts a perilous edge around her china figure; whatever it is, she absorbs me, and I’m fain to get her alone. I must find a moment, I think. I must separate her and present myself proper to her. I must hold out a hand. I must get an idea. What is the nature of your powers? What do you do that makes the women bend to your will and the men so heated to mount you?
My chance comes now. The a.m. of another empty day. Jenny off for her nap. The Men locked into the study upstairs. The Girls gone to play shuttlecock in the garden for want of something else going on. I’m supposed to be watching them and learning what’s what, only I know my break when it comes and make an excuse of my bladder.
I find her sat on a stool in front of an open cupboard in the storeroom, drooped and snoring over a book that lies on her lap. Her dress is tucked up and the laces of her boots are loosened. She’s taking her two minutes, and I’m sorry to have come in on her.
“Can I help you, Mrs. Burns?” she says before I can steal away. Her face is bleary, but her voice is bright, not a hint of sleep in it.
“Oh, Nim, I—”
Apologize, is what I want to do, for barging in and robbing her leisure. But more than that, I want to apologize for Frederick. There’s no excuse for the shabby treatment he’s been giving her. It’s as if he believes that by overlooking her, by paying no regard to her, by passing orders for her through the rest of us, he’ll convince us once and for all that she means naught to him, that not even his words are worthy of her (when, in fact, there’s not a single word he speaks that doesn’t fly right at her, that doesn’t explode about her like fireworks, that, in the noise and the bright light, doesn’t call to our minds that day some twenty years ago when her charms got such a hard handle on him that he decided the only means of release was to lift up her skirts and put his seed inside of her, not a single thought given to the harvest such behaving so unfortunate bears). Aye, that’s what I want to do, apologize for all of Frederick’s behaving. But instead I fumble with my tongue and shrink within myself and end up saying, “So how do you find it here? Do you go much to the parks?”
With red-shot eyes she pins me, and I hold her stare, and we stay like this for a time; two maids across a storeroom floor.
At last she closes her book and stands. “It’s nearly time for the picnic, Mrs. Burns.” She checks the floor around her and rummages in her pockets, looking to see if she’s dropped anything. “We’re to gather in the parlor,” she says. And when she unbends and sees me still standing here: “Perhaps you’d be more comfortable waiting up there?”
Spread out on the couches, fidgeting and yawning and trying to ignore Karl’s pacing, we bide for Jenny. After forever has passed, she swishes in and kisses the air about us, a hand busying itself with a button of her coat.
“If we want to make the best of the afternoon we should set off immediately. It could be raining in an hour, and then we would have missed the fine spell, or?”
Behind her, Karl widens his eyes and purses his lips as if to say, “Don’t look at me, I’ve had a lifetime of it.”
Once outside the gate, Frederick and Karl stride ahead, arm in crook, their heads tilted close so as not to drop anything important between them. The Girls hold hands and swing their arms like children; they each lead a dog by a strap. Jenny lets them gain a bit of distance before drawing me in and sallying forwards. Nim follows with the basket.
“Nothing extravagant,” says Jenny. “Just some roast veal, some bread and cheese, some ale.”
I turn and smile a weak smile at Nim, the tiny doll straining under the poundage.
The Men wait for us at the Heath’s edge. Karl asks whether it’s a good idea to go to the usual spot, given the
