by Jane Arbor
He suggested they should have a drink before they set out for Cork, and as he led the way to a table in the shelter of the glass roof which half covered the forecourt, he waved a hand about him.
“You know, with all due respect to the Lake’s prejudices, you’ve got to admit Burke is making a good job of the place. This, for instance—do you remember what the courtyard was like when the Mc’Donans were here? For I do,” he said.
Kate did too, and could not but admit that the change from greasy, treacherous cobbles and stacked turf was for the better. Now the forecourt, smooth paved and flanked by tubs of evergreen shrubs and rhododendrons already in bud, had the air of a patio and was a pleasant place to linger in. But reluctant to be too generous too soon, she demurred, “It’s just that it’s all so ‘development-wise’, if you know what I mean. It’s designed to attract people, and I’d say it can’t fail to do just that. But it involves an awful lot of cutting down and carving up and—changing. And that’s what Father minds so much—change that hasn’t taken decent centuries to come about, but has caught up on him almost overnight. And I’m not so sure that I’m very sold on it, either,” she added.
Dennis ordered from a white-coated boy with a merry face and a thick Mayo brogue, then said,
“So you got the message that by ‘the Lake’s prejudices’ I meant the Professor’s. He has rather dug in his heels against Burke, hasn’t he?”
Kate nodded. “He has indeed, and it makes things a bit awkward, with Bridie liking the Burkes as much as she seems to.”
Dennis agreed. “Could be tricky. What do you think of Burke yourself?”
“I’d say he’s about as puncture-proof as sponge rubber and could be as easy to ignore as a raging toothache, and he cropped up for me again last night.” She related her encounter after leaving Dennis, adding, “When I got in, Bridie was in bed and asleep, but Father had heard the car and wanted to know who had brought me back.”
“And when you told him?”
“He said ‘that one’—meaning Conor Burke—would do better to stay at his inn-keeping instead of juggernauting about the roads by night, running down innocent people, and they with scarcely a chance to escape him—”
“I can hear him!” Dennis grinned.
“Yes, well—considering I had jumped right into the path of the car and it hadn’t touched me, that was so patently unjust that somehow I found myself leaping to defend Burke without having meant to at all!”
Dennis laughed. “Ah, that’s the subtle effect of the man—that if you so much as allow there are two sides to a question, you’ll find you’ve been roped in on his before you know it.”
“He hasn’t roped in Father!”
“Only because, again with all due respect, the Professor doesn’t admit to there being any side but his own—”
Dennis broke off and rose as a middle-aged lady in perfectly cut heather tweeds came out from the hotel and approached their table. Her hair was sandy, very short, aggressively up-brushed; her eyes deep set and bright and, on Dennis’s introduction of her as Mrs. Burke, her handclasp for Kate was as firm and enveloping as her son’s.
Her gaze measured Kate with shrewd kindliness. “D’you know, when I asked Conor what you were like and had you any look of Norah or Bridie about you, he said No, you were evidently one of the original Black Ruthvens. For that’s what they called your family when they first came out of the West and settled round about the Lake, isn’t it?”
Kate agreed that it was, though applied to herself it did not sound particularly complimentary. Then Mrs. Burke was saying:
“Conor tells me too that the new look of this place had you stunned. So if Dennis can spare you for a while, perhaps you would care to see the whole of it now you’re here?”
Kate looked at Dennis, who said easily, “No hurry for Cork. We’ll be there time enough,” and went in search of Conor, leaving her with Mrs. Burke.
If her last night’s view of the Lakestrand had done something to allay her prejudice against it, this morning’s tour did more. The public rooms were comfortable, in quiet good taste; the kitchens wanted for nothing and the guests’ rooms were charming and individual. There were flowers everywhere and in hall and lounges and dining-room there were decorative arrangements more original than Kate had ever seen.
There were trays of pebbles, moss, turf and rockery stone which formed the planting ground for tiny fir seedlings and curled ferns and fantastically branching “trees” of the gnarled bogwood, as white in death as it had been black in life, which was the flotsam of the lake shores. Each arrangement was different, each a gem of artistry, and when Kate exclaimed with delight over them Mrs. Burke asked:
“And who did them, do you suppose, if not Bridie?”
“Bridie? But they’re lovely!”
“Of course they are, and every stone and twig and bit that’s in them collected by herself. The child has an instinct for flower design that’s not far short of genius, d’you know that?”
Kate met the bright eyes a little defensively. “No—at least, of course we knew that at school she had more talent for artistic things than for anything else—”
“And what are you doing about it now?”
“Doing?”
“Doing indeed! She should have training, which she’ll not get on Na Scathan, and not at all unless a word on her behalf is said in the right place.”
Kate worked that out. “You mean you think my father should send her away somewhere to be trained? But she is still very young, you know.”
“Not so young that she hasn’t dreams of making a way for herself by her own talent. Dublin, Belfast, London—there are schools that could teach her .and take care of her in such places, and you could help her to them if you would. But there, I suppose it’s all no business of mine,” concluded Mrs. Burke in a tone which conveyed the impression she supposed quite otherwise.
When they returned to the forecourt Dennis was in the driving seat of his car and standing by, talking to him, was Conor Burke.
He was in riding boots, breeches and open-necked shirt, and on his shoulder he was supporting an outsize in hatchets, which he brandished at Kate with a grin.
“You see? The arch despoiler caught in the act of hacking his superfluous timber into logs for the winter! How is the kneecap this morning?”
“Quite all right,” she told him, adding, “As it already was last night.”
“So you said.” He looked from her to where her own car stood. “Meanwhile, I take it, you’ve changed your mind and would like Phelan to go over her, after all?”
Kate said quickly, “No, please don’t let him trouble, because there seems to be nothing wrong with her at the moment.”
Conor Burke shrugged, “Dentist’s doorstep tactics—that jalopy of yours is up to them all. However, please yourself—” He opened the door of Dennis’s car for her, she got in, and with a word as to when they might be back, Dennis drove away.
Mother and son watched them out of sight. Then Mrs. Burke said, “Well, after this we needn’t be pitting our brains to guess what it was that brought her back. For isn’t it now as plain as the nose on our face?”
Her son’s hatchet took a major swing, narrowly missing a tub of azaleas. “What is?” he asked.
“Why, that she came back when she heard Dennis had, and that it’s going to be for them again the way it was before the poor fellow married and lost his wife.”
“And what do we know of how it was for them then? At the time we weren’t on the Lake ourselves.”
“What matter? We are now, and with the right—you’ve said so yourself—to a decent interest in our neighbours. And wasn’t it Bridie, no less, who told me they had been boy-and-girl sweethearts since she had understood such things—?”
Mrs. Burke broke off and sidestepped from another menacing sweep of the hatchet. “Conor, son,” she adjured mildly, “with that weapon in your hand you’re a public danger while you’re in the mood you are. So will you perhaps co
nsider taking it away and yourself with it, before you have the place broken up about our ears?”
The eave-like brows scowled. “I will,” said their owner, and went.
CHAPTER THREE
When Kate reached home that day Bridie was eager to hear her impression of the hotel, and Kate, giving them, could not praise highly enough Bridie’s unique decorations.
Bridie glowed with pleasure. “Oh, ages,” she said in answer to Kate’s question as to how long she had taken to collect the material and to complete each arrangement. “But I loved doing them, and I do think they were worth all my trouble, don’t you?”
“I do indeed,” Kate assured her. “The idea is so simple and so are the things you’ve used, yet the workmanship has the makings of a real craft. You’ll do more, won’t you? Or have you done others already?”
Bridie said, “Yes, several. People have seen them at the Lakestrand and have asked to buy them, and then I make some more.” She paused, then burst out, “But it’s not enough, Kate, don’t you see? I mean, it’s nothing to all the lovely things I know I could do with my hands and my eyes, if only I could go somewhere to learn properly how, so that I could earn my living at it and even, one day, make a name for myself!”
Kate nodded sympathy. “I think you very well might, dear. But you’ve all the time in the world before you. After all, you’re still only seventeen and I doubt if you would be accepted for training until you are eighteen at least.”
“I could be apprenticed to a florist now, if Father would let me leave home. But he won’t hear of it. You could go. Norah could get married and go. But I—! I’m supposed to take root here, I daresay!” Bridie protested rebelliously.
“I was twenty-three before I did go,” Kate reminded her. “And you don’t grudge Norah’s getting married, surely? You could also appreciate that it’s because Father is too fond of you to want to see you go while you are so young.”
“Which I could believe better if he registered oftener that he so much as—as recognises me when we meet at meals or I kiss him goodnight!”
“Bridie, that’s not fair! He does love you—all of us, in his fashion, and if anything, you the most. Do you know why? I’ve always thought it was because you are so like Mother, and Norah and I so different, that you remind him of her every day and it’s a comfort to him to be able to go on loving her through you, d’you see?”
“He still needn’t lose me if I left home, surely?” queried Bridie.
“He may believe he would, and he isn’t going to live for ever, remember. So will you forget it and be patient for a while longer at least?” urged Kate.
Bridie nodded. “I will, so. Since you put it like that I couldn’t not very well. But look,”—she paused, biting her lip—“if you would help, there’s something that would content me for the time being. You see, the Lakestrand has flowers delivered twice a week from Cork; Conor would pay me for arranging them if I could do it regularly, and if I could, I should be learning all the time, shouldn’t I? And now you’ve come home, I could surely have the time?”
“Of course you could. And I suppose you want me to help by putting the idea to Father?”
That was what Bridie wanted, and Kate promised to do her best, though warning Bridie not to be too hopeful of the outcome.
Approached, Professor Ruthven at first claimed testily that he couldn’t understand what the plan was all about. And when this front failed him, he barked, “You say this fellow Burke wants to pay Bridie for filling his flower pots for him? Well, let her tell him that she has no need of his charity. For what else can it be, when he has plenty of people gathered about him that could do it for him?”
Kate said patiently, “But they couldn’t. It’s a job in itself, and he wouldn’t have asked Bridie if it didn’t need the kind of skill and endless patience and artistic sense that she has with flowers. Besides, though she is awfully good at it already, she needs practice and the encouragement she would get from a lot of people seeing and admiring her work.”
“Then let her be doing it for that purpose and the pride she should take in it, not for that fellow’s money!”
“Which,” Kate pointed out shrewdly, “would mean he would be accepting her charity, and would you care for that much better?”
“I would not indeed. But what need has the child to be doing it at all, when she might be helping you here in the house?”
“Because housework and cooking aren’t really her bent, and she has the right to be earning at least her pocket money at something she loves. Also I don’t need her help all the hours of the day. So please, Father—” as she saw his eyes wander impatiently to the papers on his desk Kate put an arm about his humped shoulders, “may she try it for, say, the hotel’s summer season, to see how she gets on?”
He gave in at that. Kate warned Bridie that the larger, question of her leaving home for training must not be broached until at least the end of the summer, and Bridie was launched into the happy routine of getting up with the sun on two mornings a week in order to be at the Lakestrand in time to take in the consignments of flowers when they arrived by road from Cork.
About as often and sometimes more frequently, Dennis rowed over from the Island for a meal or without any stated purpose except to talk to Kate or to get her opinion of a new wrought-iron design he had in mind. The Professor always had a preoccupied welcome for him and Kate was always glad to see him, though she came to dread his moods of self-pity and futile remorse which she was at a loss to console.
She knew she ought to tell him he should brace himself for a future for which there could be no help but his own. But when she did so he accused her of not trying to “understand” and she found it easier and kinder to let him talk his despair out of his system until the next black cloud came down upon him.
Occasionally she met him at the Lakestrand for a drink and sometimes she went over to the Island and, while he did a stint at his forge, she tidied his two-roomed clay cabin and cooked a meal which they shared before he took her home again.
In her letters to Basil she wrote with wry humour of her role as buffer-state in her father’s feud with Conor Burke, worriedly of Dennis and his problems and always a page or two of tendernesses which were only for Basil’s eyes. He wrote back as often though more briefly, sometimes only a scribbled line to say he was just off to or newly back from somewhere. But always there was the fun of searching for their private code “I love you” written in one corner or under a deliberate blot or upside-down—and the sight of his writing on an envelope was the highlight of her day.
So a late Easter came and went; the Lakestrand filled up with visitors and the warm lush May mornings found them flocking to the village to buy the lengths of Irish tweed and duty-free spirits and colleen head-scarves which shared the counters of the Post Office with sides of bacon and stationery and the business of the mails.
Usually the one long street was gay with cars and noisy with young English and American voices. But on a morning when Kate had driven over to post a proof-checked manuscript back to her employers the street was awash with the torrential rain which had swept in over the mountains and the Post Office itself was unwontedly idle.
There was only one other car parked outside. It was Conor Burke’s, Kate noticed, and he was at the cigarette counter in deep conclave with Tim Halloran, the proprietor.
He exchanged good-mornings with Kate and continued talking while she did her business with Mrs. Halloran at the postal grille. But that done, their paths crossed when she was on her way to the grocery counter and he, with a “We have the thing settled, then. I’ll fix it and let you know” to Tim, was about to leave.
“You drove in?” he asked. “How is the car behaving now?”
“Like an angel,” Kate told him. “In fact, she hasn’t gone on the blink once since the day she let Bridie down, the day I came home.”
“Good.” Somehow his tone and his pause gave an odd weight to the monosyllable, and her quick glance caught a hi
nt of mischief in his eyes.
“What do you mean—good?” she demanded. “You didn’t—? You haven’t—?”
He nodded wickedly. “Guilty, ma’am!”
“After I’d asked you not to! When?”
“When but during the long hours when you were away to Cork with Dennis? You’d said Phelan wasn’t to lay a hand on her, but shouldn’t I have been to blame if, with her there under my eye, I hadn’t given her the once-over that would keep her on the road for a while longer?”
Kate raged, “Mr. Burke, you know I—”
“Conor. Aren’t we near enough neighbours to be putting first names on each other by now?”
She ignored that to repeat, “You must know I meant I preferred we shouldn’t be under an obligation to you, not to Pat Phelan, over the car. I did make that clear?”
He nodded. “As crystal, woman dear. And to make sure your severed nose should properly spite your face, I suppose you’d rather have had the thing break down under you or Bridie, and you on the open road perhaps?”
“Of course not. The garage could have—”
“—Spent twice the time on it and done it half as much good. Whereas it should do you now until you need to be tying it together with string. And if it’ll save you from destroying yourself with mortification at being indebted to me, I’ll tot up man-hours and materials and send you a bill, if you like.” Laughing, leaving her, as he had done more than once before, to feel that somehow his raillery had spiked her guns, he sketched a salute at the two Hallorans and loped out of the shop.
Mrs. Halloran, hands on aproned hips, stood gazing after him.
“And isn’t that one the lovely man, Miss Kate? Tell me now, were you ever meeting a finer, would you say?”
“Lovely? I’m afraid I find him quite—quite infuriating at times,” retorted Kate.
Mrs. Halloran stared, then her face creased with smiles. “Ah, you couldn’t mean that, surely, except that you feel that you must side with your da against him? And there’s the pity too—that your da should see him as an enemy and he bringing the good trade and prosperity to us all! Tell Miss Kate now, Tim—haven’t we doubled and trebled our takings this three months or four that the Lakestrand has been open under his hand? And what now do you think he has in his eye for us, planning it here with Tim this day? To set up a fine showcase in the hotel hall, the way we can be displaying there the trinkets of Connemara marble and mountain silver and Waterford glass that his guests can buy from us, and they with nothing like them in their own countries, so we hear!”