Loving - Henry Green [19]
be your lot d'you hear me?' �Yes'm.' 'So you never seen it before?' 'No'm.' 'And you've not even been in this place? Is that right?' �Yes'm.' 'AH right then and I don't want to hear any more. But if you so much as breathes a word of what 'as just passed I'll tan the 'ide clean off your back you little poulterer you h'understand?' 'Yes'm.' He turned, ran out. Then high shrieking giggles came faint with distance from without. Mrs Welch moved over to perforated iron which formed a wall of the larder, advanced one eye to a hole and grimly watched. The back premises of this grey Castle were on a vast scale. What she saw afar was Kate and Edith with their backs to her in purple uniforms and caps the colour of a priest's cassock. They seemed to be waiting outside O'Conor's lamp room. This was two tall Gothic windows and a pointed iron-studded door in a long wall of other similar doors and windows topped by battlements above which was set back another wall with a greater number of windows which in its turn was terraced into the last storey that was almost all blind Gothic windows under a steep roof of slate. Mrs Welch after seeming to linger over the great shaft of golden sun which lighted these girls through parted cloud let a great gust of sigh and turned away saying, 'Well if Aggie Burch can't hold 'em in leash it's none of my business, the pair of two-legged mice, the thieves,' she added. But as Edith reached for O'Conor's latch Kate screamed at her, 'And what if there's a mouse?' Then Edie, hands to the side over a swelling heart, gave back, 'Oh love you can't say that to me,' and leant against the door post. 'That you can't say love,' she said, dizzy once more all of a sudden. 'Aw come on I only meant it for a game.' 'Oh Kate.' 'You're soft that's what it is dear.' 'Not after what come to pass this very morning you didn't ought.' 'Why see who's brought 'erself to have a peek at him,' Kate said of a moulting peacock which head sideways was gazing up with one black white-rimmed eye. 'Get off,' she cried, 'I don't like none of you.' 'Quiet dear. It's likely his favourite.' 'Why what d'you know,' said Kate, 'she's not taken up with us at all at all, it's the buzzard above she's fixed on, would you believe.' 'A buzzard?' 'And if I said I didn't care.' 'No Kate you mustn't, don't strike her I said. You can't tell what might happen if he came to learn.' 'Oh Paddy,' Kate said, 'I'll bet he's well away after that dinner he ate. He'll never stir. But I shan't if you wouldn't rather.' 'She's his special I know,' Edith went on. 'I can't distinguish one from the other but there's something tells me. And who's to say if he is asleep in the dark?' 'You go on in to oblige me then,' Kate said. 'Not me I shan't. I couldn't.' 'Well I will at that.' 'Nor you won't either,' Edith said. 'You've made me frighted.' 'I will then,' Kate answered, raising the heavy latch. 'But love I'll never cause a sound even the smallest,' she said low. Edith plastered her mouth over with the palm of a hand. 'No,' she said muffled, 'no,' as O'Conor's life was opened, as Kate let the sun in and Edith bent to look. What they saw was a saddleroom which dated back to the time when there had been guests out hunting from Kinalty. It was a place from which light was almost excluded now by cobwebs across its two windows and into which, with the door ajar, the shafted sun lay in a lengthened arch of blazing sovereigns. Over a corn bin on which he had packed last autumn's ferns lay Paddy snoring between these windows, a web strung from one lock of hair back onto the sill above and which rose and fell as he breathed. Caught in the reflection of spring sunlight this cobweb looked ta be made of gold as did those others which by working long minutes spiders had drawn from spar to spar of the fern bedding on which his head rested. It might have been almost that O'Conor's dreams were held by hairs of gold binding his head beneath a vaulted roof on which the floor of cobbles reflected an old king's molten treasure from the bog. 'He won't wake now, only for tea,' Kate said. 'Because