The voice came from behind him. ‘Mind if I sit down, Fenton? Can’t stand drinking by myself, and all these old fogies here look as if they made their last journey about 1900. Travellers’ Club! All you need to have done is travelled to the other side of Pall Mall.’
Lloyd dragged up the name to match the young face out of the many he had seen attached to Nicole, hovering over her. But this one didn’t have even the maturity of Richard, much less the urbanity of Gerry Agar. ‘Oh ‒ de Courcey. Certainly. Sit down.’ He gestured to the seat opposite him. ‘You seem rather down-in-the-mouth. Somehow I don’t see you among all these old fogies at this time in the evening. Shouldn’t you be out somewhere whooping it up?’
‘Killing time until I take the train to Holyhead,’ Brendan answered.
‘Holyhead?’
‘Yes, the place where you connect with the night boat for Dublin. I’m going home.’
‘You don’t look too happy about it. I thought all Irishmen yearned for the old sod again.’
‘It’s all right,’ Brendan answered without enthusiasm. ‘Usually I’m pleased to go back. Generally I just stay for the Derby and Ascot, and head for home. This year ‒ well, this year I’ve stayed longer. Outstayed myself, in fact.’ Glumly he signalled one of the club servants for another drink for them both.
‘Outstayed?’
‘Should have been back a month ago, at least. I’ve got two horses entered in the Dublin Horse Show. I’m supposed to ride both of them. And instead of being there training them, I’ve left it to other people. I’ve let everything go overboard …’ He seemed to take his drink in a few gulps. ‘And damn all it’s done for me either. I don’t give a damn about Wimbledon and Lord’s and Henley, and this year I’ve done the lot. Bloody fool. I ought to know when I’m outclassed. Bloody waste of time, it’s been. I’m not in condition to ride a carthorse, much less a showjumper. And she hasn’t registered I’ve been here. She certainly won’t notice that I’ve gone. She didn’t even hear me the first time when I asked her to marry me …!’
‘This … this lady …’ Lloyd indicated that Brendan’s glass should be refilled, though his own was almost untouched.
‘This lady … well, you know her. She’s a good friend of Rick’s, and Gerry Agar. But not even they’ve got a chance. She’s going to marry that fool Harry Blanchard. Damn man doesn’t know one end of a horse from the other.’
‘You’re talking about Nicole Rainard?’
‘Who else? Damn little minx has set everybody by the ears. Tell you it hurts a man when a girl doesn’t even hear his proposal. For God’s sake, it can’t be that she’s in love with Blanchard. Well … I don’t know what makes women tick. Can it matter so much to be a marchioness? When you look at Nicole you can’t believe she’d have the same damn, stupid, dreary ambitions as other girls. I feel such a bloody fool ‒’
Lloyd cut in. ‘Who says she’s going to marry Blanchard? There hasn’t been an announcement.’
‘Everyone’s tipping it, including the gossip columns. Oh, what does it matter? ‒ even if she’s not going to marry Blanchard, she certainly isn’t going to marry me. And that’s all that matters to me. Look, let’s have another ‒ got to get my train then …’
‘Let’s get moving now,’ Lloyd said. ‘I’ll see you off.’
Brendan looked surprised. ‘You will? Great. I hate getting on that bloody train by myself. You know, I thought when I went back this time, Nicole would be coming too. Bloody fool …’
He continued in the same vein all the way to Euston. The porter took his luggage; they went through the barrier and found his first-class compartment. As the bags were stowed, Lloyd watched the stream of people towards the third-class carriages, the shabbily dressed people with suitcases tied with string, and brown-paper bundles. They spoke with soft Irish accents, as if this train were some outpost of their green shore. The faces looked weary. Lloyd reflected that as bad as the depression was in England, to a tiny agricultural country struggling out of a civil war, it must be infinitely worse. The sight of these exiles, on the first stage of their return home, depressed him.
To his own surprise he heard himself say, ‘Listen, Brendan, we’ve fifteen minutes before the train. Let’s go and get a drink.’
Brendan accepted the offer eagerly. ‘Great. Hate to drink alone. This damn train journey’s not something to face without something to help you sleep it away …’
In the brightly lit station buffet they faced each other across a marble-topped table. Brendan raised his scotch. ‘Here’s to all the calculating little girls. May their calculations always turn out right.’
‘What will you do now?’
‘Now? I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. First I have to try to get back in shape. No drinking. Early to bed. Up at five to take the first stables. I probably won’t be in the shape to do justice to the horses by the time of the Show, so I’ll have someone else ride them, and that will be penance enough. And then, once the Show is over, I’m going to ask Caroline Leggett to marry me. Both families have been hoping I’d do it for the last three years. She’s dead right for me. She’ll keep me in order, and make a damn good wife. Great rider. Marvellous seat. In fact, it’s been Caro who’s been schooling the horses for me while I’ve been over here making a fool of myself. I’m going to ask her to ride them in the Show. She’ll know what that means. We’ll just slide into marriage so easily hardly anyone will notice. After all, the Leggetts have lived next door for a couple of generations. Yes, that’s what I’ll do now.’
Lloyd found himself ordering another drink. He understood hardly any better than Brendan what was happening to him. ‘Just one more to see you on the train. You’ve seven minutes …’
Brendan didn’t pause. ‘Yes, it’ll be all right with Caro and me. Just grand. But look, man … tell me, there should be something a bit more than that, shouldn’t there? I mean, when you think about a girl, you want to catch fire a bit, don’t you?’ Then he shook his head. ‘I’m a bit drunk, but I know the answer to that one. If you catch fire, you have to get burned, don’t you?’
He stood up. ‘All right. It’s on the train, and back to Ireland …’ He was strangely silent as they made their way back to the platform. In the act of thrusting his hand out to shake Lloyd’s, he paused. His eyes, which had taken on a slight glaze, seemed to sharpen. He was consciously watching the people who passed, listening to the things they said. ‘You know, I’ve a feeling I won’t be back in England much any more. I’ve never felt quite comfortable in this country, even though they sent me to school here. I think I’ve learned an awful lot this summer. It all began to seem pretty foolish in the end, and I’m … well, I’m sort of ashamed when I come back to this place and see the people on their way home. I’m riding in first-class, and they’re in third. It’s rather like the way it seems to be in Ireland, as if we’ve been living off their backs for too long. We’re what they call Anglo-Irish, Fenton, and some of the best friends Ireland has ever had have come from our lot. But we’re left-overs from the time when England ruled the roost, and gave the orders. We still own a lot of the land, and it’s beginning not to seem right to me.’ He shrugged. ‘Does it sound as if I’ve taken a long time to wake up to a few realities? So ‒ I’ll admit it. I wanted life to be nice and easy. Not to bother my head with problems. Don’t know why I’m saying all this to you. After all your lot kicked the English out a long time ago, and never looked back.’
A kind of wan smile flickered across his face. ‘I might actually get serious about something, and all because a girl turned me down.’ Now he took Lloyd’s hand. ‘Thanks for coming. Damn decent of you. You should come to Ireland, you know. I’d like to show you some parts of it. No, I don’t suppose you will. Nobody much comes to Ireland. That’s part of the trouble. Poor, bloody little country that everyone’s forgotten about. They should remember … I should remember ‒’
The whistles started to blow. He clapped his hat on his head, and opened the carriage door. Thr
ough the open window he shook Lloyd’s hand again. ‘Thanks for coming,’ he said again. ‘Bet you never thought you’d be seeing a man on his way back to trying to make something of his life. Maybe you’ll hear about me some time. Maybe I’ll breed a Derby winner. Maybe I’ll go into politics and start talking for Ireland … I might surprise you some day, Fenton. I might surprise that silly little girl I lost my head over …’
The train began to move slowly. The tweed hat was waved. Lloyd stood with the people who remained, and as he walked towards the exit, he heard their voices again; he saw one or two who wept. Were they thinking of home which lay somewhere at the end of the journey of that departing train? Some place Lloyd imagined was full of small white cottages, and mist-shrouded hills, green like a jewel? A stranger’s view of Ireland, of course ‒ the pretty view which did not show the wretchedness of that lean, hungry country. Perhaps Brendan de Courcey was right ‒ it was a little country everyone had forgotten about.
On the other side of London Gerry Agar was taking the boat-train to Paris. As usual he had told no one but his manservant that he was going. His manservant had wired to the Paris apartment to have it prepared for Sir Gerald’s arrival. As usual, Gerry did not say when he would be back.
4
It had to come, of course, the quarrel. But Nicole still watched Lloyd hurrying down the steps of the Albert Memorial, where they had sat in the morning sun, with a feeling of stunned disbelief. The lovely dream couldn’t end so rudely. She expected him to stop, turn, and come back towards her, but he kept on, never once looking back, and finally he was lost as he reached the Alexandra Gate and turned out of the Park.
They had met, as they often had before, for breakfast at the Hyde Park Hotel, at a time when Iris believed Nicole was still in bed. She remembered that Lloyd had been rather silent during the meal. He’d been out late the night before, he said. It was his day off. Could she spend it with him?
Her face clouded, and then lightened again. ‘Most of it ‒ at least until three o’clock this afternoon. Aunt Iris discovered I hadn’t any clothes suitable for Scotland. The dressmaker is doing her a great favour by rushing them through. I don’t dare miss a fitting.’
He had merely grunted at that, and signalled the waiter for his bill. Then they walked along the Park, occasionally stopping to watch the riders on Rotten Row, feeling the stream of traffic swell as the city’s day got into its stride. It began to grow warm. Nicole turned her face up to it. ‘I can’t have enough of it. I can remember my mother always used to make me wear a hat when we were in Maine. Everyone else was so tanned.’ She stopped.
‘Yes, Nicky, go on,’ he prompted. ‘I like to hear about when you were a kid. You don’t talk much about it. It almost seems to me that you’ve put the whole American part of your life into a box and marked it “closed”. Yes, tell me more about what you did when you were a kid.’
She felt the familiar twist of fear in her. One day she would have to tell him, but not just yet. Not yet. She knew that she would finally have to tell him, but it would not be until they began to make their plans. And she didn’t want the plans made just yet. Why couldn’t he leave the past alone for just a little time longer? All she needed was a few more weeks of this delicious sense of floating free, of enjoying just to wake in the morning because it was another day of edging quietly closer to Lloyd Fenton.
So she smiled at him and hardly noticed that he answered with almost a frown. She skipped up the steps of the Albert Memorial, which they always made such fun of, and turned her head and laughed back at him. ‘Dull ‒ too dull, Lloyd. I was a kid in a convent, very prim and proper. Then I was a very hard-working student in Paris. I suspect I was ‒ always have been ‒ a bit of a prig. And now suddenly I’m having fun and loving it. I don’t feel one bit guilty about enjoying myself every minute I can. Come on, Lloyd, I’ll race you once around the whole glorious edifice to “Dearest Albert”. You don’t look in very good shape. They say doctors get flabby …’
But he was beside her, pulling her down to sit on the steps. ‘No. I want to hear about the kid in the sun-hat. Didn’t you have any fun then? Didn’t you let small boys fall in love with you? Weren’t you ever kissed under that sunbonnet? How did you behave when you got away from those good ladies, the nuns at St Columba’s?’
Involuntarily she shivered, even there in the sun. ‘No ‒ there’s nothing to tell. Honestly, Lloyd. I can’t remember any small boys being about. Certainly none of them kissed me. And away from the nuns, I was with Anna ‒ I was with my mother. We were together all the time.’ She shook her head. ‘No ‒ I can’t remember any small boys at all.’ Impossible to tell him about those long silent walks along the country roads, along the beaches of Maine, with Anna, the sense of unease hanging between them like a visible thing. How to tell him about Mrs Whalen’s guest house, full of carefully preserved furniture and genteel guests? Impossible. Could she ever feel sure enough of him to tell him about Brooklyn and Mrs Burnley’s? Tell him about Anna keeping her away from there for the very fear of some of the small and not-small boys about, the sequestered summers at St Columba’s? In her heart she was pleading with him not to push her too hard just yet.
‘So, no small boys in your life, Nicky? Eh? You must be the only pretty little girl in the world who didn’t have any beaux. What about Paris? Full of charming Frenchmen. Weren’t you ever followed around the galleries by young admirers? You can’t tell me that there wasn’t a single male student at the Conservatoire?’
She turned a startled face to him. ‘Lloyd, what’s the matter with you. You sound so … so harsh!’ Her voice rose in anger. ‘Yes, I am telling you the truth. The girls who went to Madame Graneau’s were supposed to be returned intact to their loving parents. Nice, marriageable girls, with no unsavoury stories hanging around them. We were chaperoned every minute of the time. During the holidays Uncle Charles went everywhere with me, and I was too busy to notice …’
‘To notice that men were watching you?’ he said. ‘Then, Nicky, you must be the fastest learner in the world. For someone who stepped unskilled into the arena just a few months ago, you’ve notched up more kills than most women do in a lifetime.’
‘Lloyd, what is the matter? What’s got into you?’
‘Perhaps I don’t like to see kids hurt by people who walk over them without even noticing.’
She said coldly, ‘Will you explain yourself? I’m tired of this riddle.’
‘I mean young Brendan de Courcey crying into his drink, and going off home to marry someone he doesn’t love because a heartless little bitch ‒’
‘You had better explain yourself. What has Brendan de Courcey got to do with … with …’
‘With you, Nicole. I suppose I should have seen you in the role of a flirt. I suppose, really, the idea amused me, until I’d seen someone hurt by it. You could have let him down more gently, or just not encouraged him at all. I suppose you enjoy having Richard on a string too. And did Gerry Agar ever actually get around to asking you to marry him? It doesn’t matter. None of them have succeeded. I hear now you’ve got Blanchard on the hook. Is this just a flirtation, or is it for real? Brendan seemed to think it was for real. He seemed pretty disappointed that you were going to fall for the simple, obvious fact of one day being a duchess. Is it as simple as that?’
‘Harry Blanchard hasn’t said a word to me about marrying him. And he won’t.’
‘But are you going to Scotland to stay with his parents?’
‘Yes,’ she answered defensively, ‘I’m going. It’s only for a few days Lloyd, don’t look like that! It’s only to please Aunt Iris.’
His hand clamped down on her wrist with a grip that hurt. ‘I’m beginning to believe that you never did anything in your life to please anyone but yourself. I suppose I’ve been as deceived as everyone else ‒ that rather wistful air. At times you almost seemed like a waif, the kid who never had any fun. It made every man within sight want to fall over himself to make you happy, to coax a smile
from you.’ He turned away from her slightly, still holding her wrist; he threw back his head as if he were laughing at himself. ‘God, I ought to know better. By the time you’ve qualified as a doctor, you should be some sort of student of human nature. You should know a thing or two. But I see I’m no different from anyone else.’
She shook her arm in his hand angrily. ‘Look at me, will you? Do I have to take all of this just because I’ve turned down Brendan de Courcey’s proposal? And as for Richard and Gerry ‒ neither of them ever asked me. Nor has anyone else, for that matter. You’re angry with me because I’m not marrying Bren. You must be crazy!’
‘I’m angry with you because you didn’t even hear him asking.’
‘Perhaps I didn’t because I was waiting for you to ask me! Go on, ask me! Just ask me!’
‘I’m not going to ‒ not just now. But I could. I probably will if I’m given a chance. If I ever have more than an hour with you. I’ll tell you what, Nicole. I’ve a proposition ‒ not a proposal. I’ll ask you to marry me, we’ll start talking about getting married, if we can get some time together. Real time together. I’ve got leave due from St Giles’s. With a little dickering around I can arrange it for next week. A week, Nicole. We could go to Fenton Field. I know the Fentons would have us, gladly. You’d be nicely chaperoned. We can just spend our time … well, just talking. Damn it, Nicky, we’ve got to have time to find out if this thing is on or not. At my age, having resisted quite a few pressures to marry, I don’t just think it will all work out beautifully because of love’s young dream. Can you stick me for a lifetime? Can I stick you?’
The Lynmara Legacy Page 20