The Fox's Walk by Annabel Davis-Goff

Since my mother seemed unable to behave as a mother should or even to register my presence, it was time for me to seek the help of another adult, someone who could look after me. And my mother.
    We were, by road, more than a mile away from Ballydavid, and even if I got myself there—I felt less confident about my ability to make the journey than I had about the far less justified excursion to Mrs. Coughlan—I would find two old women who were no more accessible or competent than my poor mother. The maids, it is true, would look after me, as they increasingly had while my mother mourned. But I had never seen either exercise authority outside the kitchen, and even there only over boys coming to the back door with messages or selling game. (Game that had probably been poached from the Ballydavid woods, according to Aunt Katie.) I tried, and failed, to imagine Bridie, with her starched muslin cap, white apron, and blue print dress, on the strand taking a firm line with my mother.
    Appealing to neighbors, I didn’t even consider. I knew my family’s grief was too private to expose to anyone not part of it. Then I thought of O’Neill. I had never seen a limit to his authority, and he even had a means of transporting my grief-frozen mother back to Ballydavid, where she would be given tea and a warm fire and the silent sympathy of the maids. Not that it would comfort her, since escape from the proximity of the two old ladies and the weight of their similar devastating emotions was the very reason for her sojourn on the strand. Be that as it might, neither she nor I could spend the night on the beach; the sun was now close to the cloudy horizon, and the wind colder on my legs.
    I knew that I was supposed to announce my intention to my mother. Walking on the main road alone was forbidden (a rule it had never been considered necessary to formulate before my elopement to the Coughlans), and I was proposing to travel more than a mile by myself. But my mother was a pale, small figure at the end of the strand still walking away from me; I knew a gesture in her direction would be pointless. Carrying my sandals, I walked along the dunes to where the beach road joined the main road that turned inland. I wanted to keep my mother in sight for as long as possible, just in case she came to her senses. But a light mist rolling off the sea made her seem even less substantial.
    Sitting on the coarse grass beside the road, I did up my sandals. The wind had blown sand, yellow and fine against the asphalt, onto the road itself. A motorcar—still rare enough to be remarked upon—came down the Waterford road toward me. It looked very like the Ballydavid car, but, although I was always prepared to be interested in a car, I couldn’t tell the difference between one make and another. And Grandmother’s car was a vehicle I had rarely seen outside its garage. It was O’Neill’s proudest possession: He assumed that he was in a sense owner of anything used outdoors at Ballydavid as, on some level, did my family and the rest of the household. Polished to a high gloss, the Sunbeam was kept under a cover of old bed sheets in the garage. I realize now that O’Neill was not an accomplished driver and, for day to day outings or those (such as meeting us at the boat) where it was necessary to have completely reliable transport, the pony and trap was always dispatched. He preferred, I think, to drive my grandmother on her afternoon calls or her visits to the graveyard when he would have plenty of time to turn and have the car pointed in the right direction when she was ready to go home.
    I watched the motorcar pass me and turn along the beach road which, behind the dunes, followed the outline of the coast. O’Neill was at the wheel and there was someone beside him. Even in the moment of overwhelming relief—it was as though I had accidentally summoned the necessary genii from a bottle—I wondered who his