by Rose Doyle
'You're right that I'm a city woman and you're right that all this space and emptiness is making me uneasy. But the Curragh'll have to suit me until the autumn.' Beezy began walking again. 'I'll go to America then. There's no good my going back to Dublin. The past and all that happened would catch up with me sooner or later and I'd really be finished then.'
We walked on slowly, friendly now in the way we used to be. We were getting on so well that after a while I took a chance and mentioned the drink. I felt I had to. She'd taken to going some nights with the hunting party, coming back to finish the night snoring and grunting, and often calling out, in her sleep.
'You won't be going to America or anywhere else if you keep on drinking the way you are,' I said. 'You've seen for yourself, often enough, what it does.'
'It gets me through the days,' she retorted, sounding surly.
'And the nights. It's like having a hog in the nest by times, the noises you make after drinking.' The whiskey might help her forget but it didn't help her in any other way.
'Enough, Sarah. I don't want to talk about it. You don't need to worry about me and the drink. I'm no Clara Hyland. The drink won't control me.' She shrugged. 'If it'll please you I'll stop. You'll see then that there's no need to worry about me.'
She took James and held him as we went along, tickling him until he laughed. She never failed to get a laugh and a smile out of him.
'I often thought that if I'd a sister she might have been like you.' She didn't sound sad, but she didn't look at me.
'Because we're of a height?' I said.
'Maybe that's all it is. Or maybe it was that I wanted to be part of a family and you and Bess were always there, friendly and talking to me.' She put James across her shoulder, so that the sun didn't shine in his eyes. 'I've always wanted the best for you.'
'Jimmy's what's best for me,' I said.
Beezy gave a long sigh. 'Was there ever a woman born, apart from myself, that could live without a man . . .' She gave me a quick, sidelong glance. 'I'm not so sure either about your Jimmy. I've not made up my mind about him yet.'
It didn't surprise me that Beezy didn't trust Jimmy. There wasn't a man on earth she trusted. She did like him, however. All of the wrens liked Jimmy. It would have been hard not to.
He came regularly to the village now, his caution around the wrens making him go out of his way to please. He brought gifts when he came, and told funny stories about barracks life. He helped too with small jobs, like buying a plank of wood and mending the door of Clara Hyland's nest. I never knew if this was a clever or innocent act on his part. The result anyway was that no one dared say a cross word about Jimmy Vance in Clara's hearing.
Cigarettes were hard to get so he brought Beezy plug tobacco and a clay pipe. She wasn't the only wren to smoke a pipe and she shared it around. I thought the habit a filthy one myself, though I had to admit the smoke in the evening times kept the clouds of midges at bay.
Preparations for the Prince of Wales's visit were so frenzied that Jimmy was able to slip out of the camp, unnoticed, most days. Sometimes he stayed a half-hour or less, other times he was with me until the last post sounded in the camp at nine thirty in the evening. As the time went on I was noticing small ways in which he'd changed. His face wasn't so soft as it had been and he'd got thinner. He looked older, more a man. The boy I'd known was going.
Beezy questioned Jimmy a few evenings after the funeral. We were sitting on the soft grass in front of the nest. The water wagon had come that day and Allie, Beezy and myself had washed almost every stitch of clothing we owned. In the dark, stretched over the furze to dry, they looked like ghostly, floating things. The sounds of drum and trumpet and parading came clearly from the camp. A great show of military manoeuvres was to be put on for the Prince of Wales.
Tell me how it is in the camp for the married soldiers and their wives,' Beezy quizzed. Since she'd stopped drinking she was greatly concerning herself with my affairs. It made me want, sometimes, to put a cup of whiskey into her hand.
'They're not the best,' Jimmy said. He'd told me as much. 'But better than in the barracks in the towns where two or three families share a room without even a screen to divide them.'
'Answer me straight,' Beezy jabbed him with a finger, 'where in the camp will you live with Sarah and James?'
'There's a couple of huts for married soldiers in my own barrack square.' Jimmy stopped and Beezy went on looking at him, waiting, the smoke from her pipe standing in the air between them. 'There's a wash house with boilers and wooden troughs.'
Beezy nodded.
'There's a common cook house,' Jimmy cleared his throat, 'and privies for the women.'
Beezy nodded again. 'What else?'
'There's no place right now for a couple to move into,' Jimmy admitted, 'but once we're married . . .'
'I've heard a great number of wives spend the early months of marriage lodging in rooms in Kildare or Newbridge,' Beezy said, 'is that a likely fate for Sarah?'
'Sarah and James will live with me in the camp.' Jimmy was firm.
Beezy nodded. 'I'm glad to hear it. It would be a bad thing, after her coming all the way from Dublin, if Sarah had to live with her baby in the she-barracks in Newbridge or in one of the back streets of Kildare.' She paused. 'It would be a very bad thing.'
'That won't happen to Sarah and James,' Jimmy spoke stiffly 'as my wife things will be different for Sarah. She'd have her pick of lodgings.'
'I won't be needing lodgings, good bad or indifferent.' I sounded a lot calmer than I felt. I'd been more than a month with the wrens. I'd hoped to spend no more than a week. 'I'll be married and moving into a place in the camp as soon as the visit by the Prince is over.' I gave Beezy a hard look and spoke loudly enough for Allie to hear me. 'It'll be early autumn then. Time for yourself and Allie to be moving on your own plans.'
'Don't you worry about my plans,' Beezy took a deep drag. Allie, sitting a bit away reading one of her medical books by candlelight, gave not the slightest indication that she'd heard me.
'You'd imagine that officer friend of Allie's could do something to hurry things along,' Beezy said in a raised voice.
'There's not a lot anyone can do at the moment,' Allie heard this all right, 'not until after the royal fever has ended.'
I watched her carefully. She hadn't raised her head. She didn't seem to miss a line of her reading either.
It was hard to know if Captain Ainslie meant something, or nothing at all, to her. They met once, sometimes twice, a week and went walking together across the plains. He never came into the village, arriving either on foot or on horseback and waiting a short distance away for her to join him.
When she did they walked slowly, keeping a decent space between them and as sedately as if they were parading the footpaths of Ballsbridge or Merrion Square. Allie always wore a dress, and sometimes a hat. They were never gone for longer than an hour and never out of sight of the village.
Beezy Ryan and the other wrens watched them too. No one said anything to me but I knew they were talking and wondering what was going on.
Wondering was all I could do myself because, though Allie gave me facts when I asked for them, she told me very little. I knew, for instance, that he rode a large, bay horse called Sam and that he liked the countryside around. I didn't know what he expected of their friendship, if anything.
'Your Captain Ainslie seems fond of you,' I said to her later that night. We were lying side by side in the nest trying to sleep. It was hot inside and noisy outside where a hunting party was getting ready to leave. Beezy was going with them.
'He's bored with life in the camp and wants diversion,' Allie said. 'All he hears there is talk of the Prince and the honour he's doing the camp and what's to be done to impress him while he's here.'
'What do you think of him?'
'I've not given him much thought,' Allie yawned, 'they say he likes to travel and to be amused. Alexander says he's been to the Curragh before, for military trai
ning, and that he made an ass of himself—'
'I don't want your thoughts on the Prince,' I interrupted curtly, 'it's Alexander Ainslie I wondered about.' I stressed his name.
'He's passable company.' She yawned again, putting great effort into it. 'His conversation is interesting because it concerns things I know nothing of. He talks to me about the part of England he comes from, about how the people live there.'
'Why does he stay in the army if he's so bored by it?'
'He's obliged. It's tradition in his family for men to spend time soldiering. It's all to do with money and honour.' She laughed. 'Have you noticed, Sarah, how money and honour are never too far separated?'
'What do you think of him?' I wasn't going to have her changing the subject.
'I don't think of him,' she was brisk, 'except to give him polite attention when we're together.' She tossed on the pallet. 'I'm tired, Sarah. Goodnight.'
I let it go. Any more questions and she'd remind me that I'd kept Jimmy Vance a secret from her until it had suited me to tell. "
At the core of my need to know was the nagging worry that Allie had put herself in debt to Captain Ainslie for helping bring Jimmy and me together. I hoped her walks and talks with him — and wherever they were leading to — hadn't to do with a repayment of that debt.
Beezy and Nance Reilly came to me one day as Allie left to meet her captain outside the village.
'What's Allie Buckley up to with her officer?' Beezy stood with her hands on her hips watching as they walked away. Her bare arms and chest were freckled and she'd been wearing her rings since Lizzie Early's funeral. There had been no comment about this from the other wrens; no one in the village questioned Beezy any more.
'You can see them for yourself,' I said, 'they're just walking together.'
Beezy made a sharp, clicking sound with her tongue. 'Don't talk to me as if I was a fool. Walking's the least of what they're doing,' she said, 'I thought life had knocked some sense into that silly woman but now I'm not so sure again.'
'She says there's nothing to it,' I said.
'What else is she going to say?' Nance Reilly sat on an upturned pot and poked at the fire. I was boiling water for tea. 'He may be able to play a patient game but he's no different than the rest of them. He'll have his way with her in the end. She'll be nothing but the leavings of an officer when that happens and may as well forget her notions of becoming a physician.'
She was right. Captain Alexander Ainslie might well be a decent man but he was an officer in Her Majesty's army. His place in society was ordained by God and bound by class. By allying herself with the wrens Allie had put herself beyond the prospect of a respectable friendship with him. Beezy and Nance Reilly were right too in saying that he would make her his mistress, if she would have him, and leave her when his time in the army ended.
'He's taken with her,' Beezy said. She was never wrong when it came to the affairs of women with men.
'That's only because he hasn't had her yet,' Nance snorted.
'I thought the officers had their own diversions? I heard there was a kip house serves them the other side of the camp. A grand country house, was what I heard.'
Beezy began to pack her pipe. She'd been short-tempered for a couple of days and it seemed to me she was missing the drink.
'I don't know how grand it is,' Nance said, 'but it's big and there's a fair number of girls in it all right. A lot of trouble too. The madam isn't as diligent as she might be.'
This last was to mollify Beezy, who snorted and dragged on her pipe. 'It's hard to avoid trouble,' she was sour, 'even in the best-run places.'
'There was a lot of gossip about the Prince of Wales and an actress the last time he was here,' said Nance. 'He brought her to his rooms.'
'There always was and always will be one rule for the rich and landed and another for the rest of us.' Beezy squinted into the distance. 'Your soldier has joined Allie and her officer,' she said quickly, 'there's a lot of talking going on. It looks to me as if he's got news of some sort.'
I settled James and walked down the road to join them. Listening to Beezy and Nance had made up my mind for me about taking action on Allie's behalf. I wanted her happy before I settled for happiness myself and had become more than ever certain that Daniel Casey would make her content. He would help her find a role in medicine. He would marry her, if she would have him. He would always care for her.
I would write to him and this time make sure nothing came between them.
I was quite sure of my reading of the two men. I didn't once think about which of them Allie herself might want.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Sarah
Captain Ainslie had arranged a day at the races.
He would be Allie's companion for the day. Jimmy would be my escort. The four of us would travel to the Punchestown meeting in a brougham. We would picnic there too. Captain Ainslie would see to everything.
It had all been agreed between Jimmy and the captain by the time I got to where they stood talking. Allie was doubtful, shielding her eyes against the sun and, under the cover of her hand, giving me a warning frown as I drew near.
I was doubtful myself when I heard the plan. The Prince of Wales would be there, and the Princess, along with anyone worth inviting in county Kildare and a good percentage of Dublin society too. There was a chance of someone seeing and recognising me and of the past opening up. I didn't want anything to come in the way of my plans to quickly and quietly marry Jimmy Vance.
There was also James to think about. He'd been with me, waking and sleeping, since the day he was born but I couldn't bring him to a racetrack meeting. I was weaning him from the breast but he would be distressed without me anyway. I would be distracted without him.
I said nothing, and neither did Allie, as the men talked about the racing.
'Steeplechasing's what they do at Punchestown, sir, so I'm told.' Jimmy rubbed his hands together, grinning.
'They go over the jumps at Punchestown all right,' Captain Ainslie nodded, 'and the racing's promised good. There's five hundred pounds in the pot for the inaugural of the Prince of Wales's Plate. The day will be an enjoyable one,' he pulled a face at a few straggly clouds, 'unless it rains.'
It was hard, in the face of Jimmy's shining delight and Captain Ainslie's generosity, to argue the case for not going.
And so it was agreed that we would go to Punchestown Races.
The brougham hired by Captain Ainslie had two white horses. Its hood was down and the sun shone on its leather upholstery when it arrived to collect Allie and myself. Jimmy and Captain Ainslie climbed out and stood, side by side, as we walked towards them.
Jimmy was buttoned into his best tunic and wore his hat. It would have been hard to find a more handsome man anywhere. The captain wore a great deal of braid and a larger hat. But the way they stood, stiff and self-conscious, made them both look like boys.
You couldn't blame them. Allie and I were followed from the village by two-thirds of the women, all of them laughing and calling as if it was a fair day or procession of some kind. Beezy wasn't with them. Beezy was with James, in the nest.
'You'll be getting us a good name.' Clara Hyland stopped the parade at the edge of the road. 'More of this kind of carry-on and the hoi polloi will be coming to take tea with the wrens.'
'Take me with you.' Moll tugged at Allie's sleeve. 'You won't know I'm there. I won't talk. I won't breathe, hardly. I'll follow at your heels like a faithful dog.'
'If I wanted a dog I'd get one,' Allie said, looking annoyed, 'and stop your carry-on. I've promised that you and I will have another outing, another day. Your mother has agreed . . .' She raised her eyebrows at Clara who looked from Allie to the brougham before taking her daughter's hand and heading back towards the village. Allie lifted her parasol and walked quickly on.
If Allie felt bad about leaving Moll behind it was nothing to the way I was feeling about leaving James. No matter how often I went over the facts that Beezy wo
uld guard him with her life, that he would very likely sleep most of the half-dozen or so hours I would be away, the hollow at the pit of my stomach remained. The umbilical cord might have been cut that morning.
Jimmy and Captain Ainslie helped Allie and me into the brougham. We sat, two polite couples facing one another, and drove away. I tried not to look back, but my neck swivelled of its own accord. I will forever see the Curragh as it was when I did: the yellow-flowered furze bushes against the green, the lazy white of the sheep and the paint-like dabs of red and blue that were soldiers walking in the distance. Most of all I will see the wrens in their petticoats and bare, waving arms wishing us joy and the best of days.
I'd never seen anything like the racecourse at Punchestown, and never seen so many people in one place.
The course itself was laid out in a semi-circle and separated from the racegoers by a fence. The horses which were to run were kept mainly to one end; everywhere else was black with people: police and soldiers and men and women in their best finery. The Grandstand towered over it all, flags flying from its white- painted, curved iron supports. A German band played loudly.
The Prince of Wales was there, riding a white horse and wearing a black top hat. He was surrounded by dukes and lords of every kind, all of them on horseback but none on a white animal like the Prince. The Princess of Wales and the Vice Regal party were distant figures, high in The Grandstand.
'That's as much as we'll see of any of them,' Captain Ainslie laughed, 'a refreshment room's been built on to the back of the Grandstand for the royal party.'
'I've seen as much as we want to see,' Allie said.
'So have I, my dear,' said the captain, 'so have I.'
It was unspoken between us that it would be a bad thing if the captain ran into Major General Ponsonby. The commander could hardly fail to recognise myself and Allie and he hadn't struck me as a man with a forgiving nature. Nor one who would overlook an officer ridiculing his orders.