by Jane Arbor
To which her companion only chuckled maddeningly by way of reply.
They kept the van in sight most of the way and were only a few yards behind it when they reached the house. As they all got out Kate noted that the message she had left for Dennis had disappeared, indicating that he had been and gone, and she was glad of that, not knowing how much Bridie wanted him to know. She turned to Conor. “You’ll come in, will you?” she said.
He shook his head. “Not now. I’ll be on my way.”
“Please—!”
But he would not, and as plainly as if he had said as much she realised he had refused out of a quirk of respect for her father’s feud with him. You did your enemy a service, but you didn’t enter his house unbeknownst to him. How rigid could the male code get? thought Kate, though she liked Conor for the scruple all the same.
He turned to Bridie, relieved her of the canvas holdall which had been her only runaway luggage, and passed it on to Kate. “You’ll, take the van on the Cork trip and be over with us as usual on Friday, little one?” he asked.
“I—suppose so.” Bridie’s tone was lifeless, don’t-care, and she avoided his eyes. But then her chin quivered piteously and she flung herself into his arms.
“Oh, Conor, Conor, you’re so good! Why aren’t more men just like you, instead of being as—as beastly as they are?” she mourned, her face hidden against his shoulder.
He smoothed the bright hair from which the headscarf had slipped back. “Good, is it? Sure now, and didn’t I only come hunting you for the reason that, with you away to England, we might be reduced to dandelions in jam-jars for our table decorations? And more like me? D’you ask that?—and I so unique that they’re after breaking the mould of me, for fear there’d be copies made?” he teased her in an exaggerated brogue, and was rewarded by her lifting her head and achieving a wintry smile before she stood back and let him get into his car.
In the house she agreed mechanically to Kate’s suggestion that she should have a bath and come down in dressing-gown and slippers for a meal on a tray. Over it they talked for a long time, and when at last she went to bed, Kate sat with her until after she slept.
Then Kate did the night chores of washing up, shutting the henhouse, stoking the boiler fire, and was ready for bed herself. But before going to her room she went in search of a paperback Gaelic-English phrase book she knew she had, and scanned through it, looking for ‘a thaisge’ and its English meaning.
It was not there.
Life around the Lake went on.
Dennis left for a visit to his in-laws and returned more depressed and guilt-ridden than ever. Kate despaired of him. Before he went away she had persuaded herself that work and her own and Bridie’s companionship were doing something for him. But while he was in the north a further specialist report had confirmed that the disablement of his hip was a permanency, and only then did Kate realise how much he had been secretly counting on the outside chance of a cure.
She had also to stand by, pitying Bridie’s anti-climax, powerless to help her except through her own experience. And who, in the kind of pain and humiliation Bridie was suffering, ever believed there could be a parallel to it?
Once, however, Bridie drew her own parallel with a question which, though Kate knew its reasoning to be false, she did not know how to answer for Bridie’s comfort.
Bridie said piteously, “What is it about us, you and me, Kate, that both of us should be—I suppose you could call it jilt-prone? What was it we said or did, or were or weren’t, that made Basil throw you over, and Guy me? What haven’t we got that keeps men serious about us? And if we haven’t got it now, why were we allowed to kid ourselves we ever had?”
Taken off guard, Kate said the wrong thing. “Oh, Bridie,” she protested, “as if you can make a formula for it! Besides, Basil and I agreed it was best we should part—”
“Whereas Guy was just playing me along and I was mutt enough to fall for it?” queried Bridie bitterly.
“No! He wilfully encouraged you and traded on his charm, and you would have been a freak if you hadn’t, well—blossomed to it. So if you’re looking for why, you should look at him, not at yourself. He failed. You didn’t. Bridie darling, you mustn’t work up a thing about your not having got what it takes to keep a man in love with you—you really mustn’t!” Kate urged.
Bridie shivered, though not from cold. “I can’t help it,” she said. “Even when I’ve got over Guy, next time I know I’m going to be terribly—afraid.”
“You’re not! You’re not! You’ll have learnt that little bit more to be able to recognise the Guy type coming, and when another man really falls for you, you won’t even think about being afraid.”
“How do you know? Aren’t you scared of getting hurt all over again?”
Kate hesitated. “I hope I’m not. I’d hate to think one broken affair had made me cynical about love, and I’m sure the real men outnumber the Guy Davenports by hundreds to one.”
“By ‘real’ you mean people like Dennis and Conor? Faithful ones, kind ones?” Bridie expelled a long sigh. “And mercy, what a husband Conor’s going to make, the way his girl will know he’ll be there for her, backing her up like mad and protecting her in every crisis of their lives! I mean, she’ll always be able to lean on him in everything, knowing he won’t crack anywhere under her weight. Don’t you rather envy her, Kate? I do.”
Kate said slowly, “In theory I suppose I do, though men like that usually expect to make all the decisions themselves, and I doubt if I’m so thoroughpaced a ‘leaner’ that I’d take that lying down every time.”
Bridie achieved a rare giggle. “If you were leaning, you’d only be on the slant! But no, I agree you’re not the type for anyone like Conor. He says so himself—that you don’t seem to have a clue that that’s what a man is for, to be a leaning-post and a bulwark rolled into one.”
Kate sat erect as if stung. “D’you mean you and Conor discuss me between you?”
“But of course you crop up when we’re talking! That’s not ‘discussing’; it’s just being interested. In fact, we were on the subject of Dennis when Conor said it of you—that you should beware of pity unless you were prepared to make a life work of it ... Kate, what are we going to do about Dennis, supposing he can’t or won’t snap out of the moods that are on him now?” Bridie added worriedly.
That, however, was a question Kate could not answer, though every time she met Dennis she knew it was one he was asking of himself. With as little result, she believed, until the afternoon when she rowed over to the Island on the prosaic errand of relaying a message from his Cork forge which she had taken for him at the house.
She found him making a show of working at some designs, but the alacrity with which he pushed aside his sketches showed she had interrupted nothing and when she gave him the message his reaction to it was lukewarm.
“Oh, that!” he dismissed it. “How those fellows do nag! You know what it’s about, don’t you?—that American competition they’re so keen I should enter, and this is another prod at me, reminding me that there’s a closing date. As if, so far as I care, it matters whether it closes tomorrow or stays wide open for good!”
“Oh, Dennis, why can’t you care? Isn’t the thing right up your street—non-industrial wrought-iron design with an entirely free hand as to subject?” urged Kate.
“And the prize—a tour of U.S. foundries and guaranteed commissions galore. And perhaps you’ll be telling me what kind of figure I’d cut, hobbling round on the one and having to turn down the other for want of the stamina to stand up at a forge and see any but small-scale stuff through from blueprint to finish? Besides, what need do I have of commissions? Haven’t I money enough and to spare as it is?” he wanted to know.
Kate tried irony. “You seem to assume you would win,” she said dryly.
“Not at all. But where’s the sense in competing for anything if you don’t know you have it in you to come within shouting distance of a win, or if not
that, at least hoping you may? And that’s where I’m lacking, Kate—I don’t want to win, simply because there’s no one to care enough, supposing I should be able to say, ‘Look—I did it!’ ”
Knowing she offered him nothing she craved, Kate said, ‘We should be glad for you; all your friends would. And even if you took up neither the tour nor the commissions, wouldn’t you be proud to win?”
He shook his head. “Not particularly, while I’ve no one I love to share the triumph with, nor to run to for reassurance if I came nowhere.” He rose, kicked the embers of his peat fire to a glow and settled a blackened kettle on them. “No, that kind of pride is only for egoists like, say, Burke. That one couldn’t spell ‘failure’ at the latter end of writing it out a hundred times, and he’d cheerfully polish the moon to show he ought to have a hand in running the cosmos—”
To that Kate said nothing, and for a time there was silence except for the busy hum of water coming to the boil. Until it did Dennis stood staring into the fire and when the kettle lid lifted he put back a hand.
“Pot, Kate. Tea. You know where they are.”
She brought both and he made the tea. But in turning to set it down he tripped on the stone fire-kerb and would have fallen but for Kate’s swift grip upon his elbow.
He frowned. “You see? I’ve no more balance than a dead pegtop—” he began, and then was staring down at her hand as if surprised by its support. He looked up at her, drawing her eyes to meet his. Then his arms went out to her and she was in them, yielding to a need of her own which she did not understand, though guiltily aware that it had nothing to do with him.
They stood so for a long moment, embracing and embraced. But Dennis did not kiss her, and when she stirred he let her go.
“Be honest, Kate—did you see that coming?” he asked.
“No—”
“But you let it happen. Why?”
“I—don’t know. I shouldn’t have, I suppose.”
“Maybe nor should I, though when you hung on to me just now it came to me suddenly just how much I depend on you and I felt I had to know what more there might be for the two of us. D’you see?”
“I do. But there wasn’t any more, was there?”
He sighed. “No!. I’m sorry, Kate—”
She assured him quickly, “You don’t have to be. I think I could have told you that if you had made love to me just now it would have been to Aileen, not to me. And if I’d responded—”
“—it would have been to Basil Kent, not to me?” he finished for her. “And yet, Kate, why not? What should we have to lose by trying? We may be castaways both, but we’re good friends, and isn’t the half of a loaf better than no bread at all?”
She shook her head. “Not when it’s a question of love, Dennis. Second best would be no good to either of us.”
“I don’t know. We’ve so much in common already and I suppose it could turn into first best if we gave it a chance. Look, Kate”—he reached for her hand and began to part the fingers thoughtfully—“say we agree to keep an open mind about it, not shut the door on the idea for good? We’ve got time enough before us, and during the last few minutes I’ve been thinking that if I could believe you cared specially, there might be some point to carrying on. What do you say?”
Kate hesitated. “I’m not sure I know what we’re talking about. Do you mean you’re suggesting a kind of trial—engagement?”
“Not if you don’t want one. More of an understanding that marriage some time in the future isn’t an impossible idea.”
“But we don’t love each other, Dennis. Just now, nothing—sparked.”
“Can one expect it to, a second time?” He made a bitter rhetorical question of it before adding, “But isn’t it something that at least we’re honest about it, and I do need your faith in me, Kate, so much—”
She knew it was not enough and that he ought to know it too. An echo sounded in her head—Bridie reporting Conor, “Kate should beware of pity, unless she’s prepared to make a life work of it”. And if she agreed to what Dennis asked it would only be in pity for him, and where might that lead? The thing was dangerous; it was shoal-ridden; there was no future in it. And yet a moment later she heard herself telling him, “All right, we’ll try it,” and then they were smiling at each other, still not very clear as to what they had agreed to, though they kissed lightly on whatever pact it was.
Afterwards they shared tea and soda bread and butter on a table innocent of cloth or tray, and Kate listened while, for the first time for months, Dennis talked of his work and his plans with scarcely a throwback to cynicism at all.
So much she had done for him, thought Kate, glad.
And later, in panic, what had she done for herself with a promise for which there must be a reckoning one day? What had she done?
For though, in that moment of going into Dennis’s arms, her need had been blind then, it was palpable now. His hunger had been for dead Aileen; he believed hers had been for Basil. But it was not, and she knew it. It was for Conor Burke. For Conor of the blunt tongue, the craggy bulk, the self-arrogance. For Conor’s touch, masterful and compelling with her, gentle and compassionate with Bridie ... For Conor, that gadfly of irritation to her father’s temper; for Conor who, caring nothing for her, had once kissed her with passion at his own misguided impulse. For Conor, to whom she was merely his “good woman” at the receiving end of his patronage, his advice, his disinterested kindness. For Conor whom all her sanity forbade her to love. Yet incredibly, crazily, she did—and had still allowed her pity to make Dennis some vague promise of a shared future. What had she done?
Whether or no Dennis had the same doubts she did not ask, and when he seemed to be taking new heart, she dared not voice her own.
They had time enough. He had said so himself. And while they kept their pact secret and undefined, where was the harm? she let herself argue. Things had a way of working out, even against the grain of your plans for them, and if it helped Dennis now to believe they might grow love from the seeds of their friendship, by the time he must learn that they couldn’t, he might well be his own man again and it would not matter.
He sent for the papers relating to the design competition and began on his preliminary drawings, working in earnest towards the deadline of the closing date. His ambition was for a design of ornamental gates, but he rejected it in favour of candelabra which he could cast at his own forge without help. From not caring whether he worked or idled, he became again the perfectionist he used to be. For days at a time the mainland did not see him at all; his cabin was a chaos of blueprints and discarded experiments and he took his meals standing when he remembered to eat. But that he seemed to be knowing near-happiness again was Kate’s reward.
It was while he had taken time out for another brief visit to the north that the rumours broke regarding wide areas of the hinterland of the lake shores.
They were up for public sale, everyone told everyone; they had already been sold, fancy that. Conversely, they weren’t and they hadn’t been—glory be, who would be paying money for good-for-nothing land like that? And then again that they were in the market—which was when Conor called at the house to see the Professor.
Kate, opening to him, had to fight surprise as well as the now familiar plunge of her heart at sight of him.
“Father?” she hesitated. “Yes, he’s at home, but—”
Conor grinned. “It’s all right. I’m not gatecrashing. I’m here at his own bidding,” he told her.
“He asked you to come?”
“He did—by a royal command which he left with the Hallorans at the shop.”
“But why? What for?”
“He didn’t say, though I’ve my own guess—”
There Conor broke off as the Professor’s study door opened and he came into the hall.
“What’s all the tattle, Kate? Twitter, twitter, twitter—hasn’t a man the right to some peace while he’s at his work?” he demanded, then drew down his spectacles to peer
at Conor.
“You’re Burke,” he stated unnecessarily. “And what might you be wanting of Kate?”
Conor’s eye glinted mischief in Kate’s direction. “Of Kate? Why nothing that I’d be bold enough to ask,” he said. “Anyway, aren’t I here at your own request, not hers?”
“I asked you to come? D’you say that?” The Professor’s tone held doubt, but then he nodded to Kate. “Ah yes, I remember now. I wanted to see him. So bring him in, will you, till we can get at the truth of the latest barbarism he’s thought to be planning now?”
It was Kate who offered cigarettes which Conor accepted but which her father waved irritably aside. Conor sat easily, relaxed; the older man, rigid, judicial, until without preamble he accused,
“Will you say now whether it’s true or false that you have a bid made for this land that’s for sale and that you’re by way of getting it at your price?”
Conor said, “It’s true. Though not that I have only a bid made. I’ve bought it. It’s mine.”
“It is, so? And what do you propose to do with it now you have it, may I ask?”
“By rights, you may not. But since you do, I’m thinking of laying out a golf-course for the use of my guests,” Conor said mildly.
“A golf-course?” Professor Ruthven’s echo implied that he would have preferred a bearpit or a cockfight arena. “A golf-course?” he repeated. “And maybe, since you now own the land, you know where the most of it lies?”
“I should—since I’ve had it under survey for some time. It runs behind your own land; behind the O’Sheas’; behind the Heenans’ farm and so west.”
“Exactly. And why do you suppose decent, quiet people like the three of us should welcome the idea of gaggles of tourists playing golf at our very back doors?”
Conor’s brow lifted. “Ah, ‘decent’ I’ll allow. But ‘quiet’? Speak for yourself, Professor. For don’t all three of the Heenan boys own supercharged motorbikes, and isn’t it a known fact around the Lake that the eight young O’Sheas haven’t stopped shouting since they were baptised? Besides, would you be cheating the poor gossoons of the re-sale of all the golf-balls they’ll be finding? For shame!”