The new year came in with Angus MacQueen's annual Hogmanay party on Rudna Hunish, and still the move to the big house had not been accomplished. It wasn't something done overnight, between packing over seven years' accumulation of everyday artifacts, and Fee's declaration that the big house drawing room at least be finished first. No one was in the slightest hurry, though everyone was looking forward to it. In some respects the big house would prove no different: it lacked electricity and the flies populated it just as thickly. But in summer it was about twenty degrees cooler than outside, from the thickness of its stone walls and the ghost gums shading its roof. Also, the bathhouse was a true luxury, having hot water all winter from pipes which ran up the back of the vast fuel stove in the cookhouse next door, and every drop in its pipes was rain water. Though baths and showers had to be taken in this large structure with its ten separate cubicles, the big house and all the smaller houses were liberally endowed with indoor water-closet toilets, an unheard-of degree of opulence envious Gilly residents had been caught calling sybaritism. Aside from the Hotel Imperial, two pubs, the Catholic presbytery and the convent, the Gillanbone district survived on out-houses. Except Drogheda homestead, thanks to its enormous number of tanks and roofs to catch rain water. The rules were strict: no undue flushing, and plenty of sheep-dip disinfectant. But after holes in the ground, it was heaven.
Father Ralph had sent Paddy a check for five thousand pounds at the beginning of the preceding December, to be going on with, his letter said; Paddy handed it to Fee with a dazed exclamation. "I doubt I've managed to earn this much in all my working days," he said. "What shall I do with it?" Fee asked, staring at it and then looking up at him, eyes blazing. "Money, Paddy! Money at last, do you realize it? Oh, I don't care about Auntie Mary's thirteen million pounds there’s nothing real about so much. But this is real! What shall I do with it?" "Spend it," said Paddy simply. "A few new clothes for the children and yourself? And maybe there are things you'd like to buy for the big house? I can't think of anything else we need."
"Nor can I, isn't it silly?" Up got Fee from the breakfast table, beckoning Meggie imperiously. "Come on, girl, we're walking up to the big house to look at it."
Though at that time three weeks had elapsed since the frantic week following Mary Carson's death, none of the Clearys had been near the big house. But now Fee's visit more than made up for their previous reluctance. From one room to another she marched with Meggie, Mrs. Smith, Minnie and Cat in attendance, more animated than a bewildered Meggie had ever known her. She muttered to herself continually; this was dreadful, that was an absolute horror, was Mary color-blind, did she have no taste at all? In the drawing room Fee paused longest, eyeing it expertly. Only the reception room exceeded it in size, for it was forty feet long and thirty wide, and had a fifteen-foot ceiling. It was a curious mixture of the best and the worst in its decoration, painted a uniform cream which had yellowed and did nothing to emphasize the magnificent moldings on the ceiling or the carved paneling on the walls. The enormous floor-to-ceiling windows that marched uninterruptedly for forty feet along the veranda side were heavily curtained in brown velvet, casting a deep gloom over the dingy brown chairs, two stunning malachite benches and two equally beautiful benches in Florentine marble, and a massive fireplace of cream marble veined in deep pink. On the polished teak floor three Aubusson carpets had been squared with geometrical precision, and a Waterford chandelier six feet long touched the ceiling, its chain bunched round it.
"You are to be commended, Mrs. Smith," Fee pronounced. "It's positively awful, but spotlessly clean. I shall give you something worth caring for. Those priceless benches without anything to set them of-it's a shame! Since the day I saw this room, I've longed to make it into something every person who walks into it will admire, and yet comfortable enough to make every person who walks into it want to remain."
Mary Carson's desk was a Victorian hideousness; Fee walked to it and the phone which stood upon it, flicking its gloomy wood contemptuously. "My escritoire will do beautifully here," she said. "I'm going to start with this room, and when it's finished I'll move up from the creek, not before. Then at least we'll have one place where we can congregate without being depressed." She sat down and plucked the receiver off its hook. While her daughter and her servants stood in a small bewildered huddle, she proceeded to set Harry Gough in motion. Mark Foys would send fabric samples on the night mail; Nock and Kirbys would send paint samples; Grace Brothers would send wallpaper samples; these and other Sydney stores would send catalogues specially compiled for her, describing their lines of furnishings. Laughter in his voice, Harry guaranteed to produce a competent upholsterer and a team of painters capable of doing the meticulous work Fee demanded. Good for Mrs. Cleary! She was going to sweep Mary Carson right out of the house.
The phoning finished, everyone was directed to rip down the brown velvet curtains at once. Out they went onto the rubbish heap in an orgy of wastefulness Fee supervised personally, even putting the torch to them herself.
"We don't need them," she said, "and I'm not going to inflict them on the Gillanbone poor."
"Yes, Mum," said Meggie, paralyzed.
"We're not going to have any curtains," said Fee, not at all disturbed over a flagrant breach of the decorating customs of the time. "The veranda's far too deep to let the sun come in directly, so why do we need curtains? I want this room to be seen."
