by Jane Arbor
One “last time” which loomed for her was Conor’s invitation to dine with him at the Lakestrand on the evening before she was to leave for England. He had made it something of a royal command, brooking no refusal, and she had accepted, knowing she wanted to against every cautious instinct which warned “Don’t! It will hurt too much.” Though she knew she should for her own sake, she could not resist the temptation of a last evening near him, trusting that her pride would carry her through it.
She had kept her promise to Dennis, not telling Bridie of his plans until she wrote her first letter to her in Dublin.
“While he was on a kind of razor-edge of knowing he ought to go, though not wanting to, he said he couldn’t afford to have anyone persuade him against it [Kate wrote]. I haven’t told you either that the little that was ‘on’ between him and me is ‘off’ for good. No thanks to me ... While I havered, he took the decision out of my hands. Apparently, about as suddenly as I resolved to tell him I would marry him, he realised we mustn’t. It’s spoilt nothing else we shared, and I don’t think it ever will. But write to him, will you, dear, for he’s very much alone now and will want to know that you, of all people, under-stand why he is...”
But before Bridie answered that letter Kate received two others by the same post, both giving versions of the same item of news.
Kate opened Norah’s airmail first to read:
“In haste, darling, [had Norah ever been known to put pen to paper at leisure? was Kate’s amused thought] by the oddest chance you’d hardly credit, a sister and brother-in-law of Lady Soames—you know, Dennis Regan’s Aileen’s mother?—have been out here to visit their son, who happens to be Tom’s headmaster. Of course we met them at a staff party and got talking about Home as one always does. Well, now they’ve flown back, but before they went they took reels of cine-film of Tom and me (looking like a barrel, no less) and our quarters and school—the lot—and they promised faithfully that Dennis should have them to show to you. Anyone would lend you a projector and a screen—Conor Burke has both, I know...”
In the other letter Lady Soames wrote!
“Dear Kate—Dennis always speaks of you so very fondly, so I may too?—You may already have heard from your sister in Kuwait of the coincidence which put my sister in touch with her. Now we have here films of her and her husband and scenes in Kuwait which I am sure you would dearly like to see. As you know, Dennis is here with us at present, and as he tells me you are returning to your job in London early next week, I am wondering whether you would care to travel via Belfast instead of direct, spending next weekend with us on your way?
“Please come if you can. We should love to have you, if only by reason of all you have done for Dennis since he and we lost Aileen.”
Kate folded both letters thoughtfully, her first reaction being that she could not bring her departure forward, her second that perhaps she could.
It meant cancelling her Monday’s flight; booking instead a Friday flight to Belfast; telephoning Lady Soames that she would like to come; cutting out Sunday night’s dinner with Conor for a legitimate reason, and was that not perhaps wisdom after all?
Before she could change her mind she set about her new arrangements; telephoning, doing some preliminary packing, glad now of the shrunken time before her, half glad, half sorry that no alternative date with Conor was possible. For at present he was attending an hoteliers’ convention in Dublin, and though he was returning as far as Cork on Thursday, he had another appointment in the city that evening and would not be back home until Friday. Mrs. Burke confirmed this when Kate rang up to explain the reason for her Belfast errand and to make her apologies.
“He’ll be sorry, but be sure I’ll tell him when he comes why you won’t be over on Sunday,” she said.
“Thank you, Mrs. Burke. I do hope he’ll understand,” Kate said.
“And why shouldn’t he? You don’t think he’d grudge you your chance to see these pictures of Norah and Tom? You’ll be seeing Dennis too, so? And what about Bridie? Have you heard from the child at all since Dublin swallowed her?”
“I haven’t. She owes me a letter, but now I’ll have to write her again about my change of plan.”
“Well, when you do, tell her that if she isn’t getting enough to eat, she has only to drop us a card and we’ll whip a parcel of good country food into the post straight away. And yourself, Kate my dear—when are you off, did you say?”
“On Friday now.”
“By what plane from Cork? The three o’clock? Ah, then there’s little hope you won’t miss Conor, for I’m not expecting him back much before lunch. But the two of you will be over for Christmas, if not before?”
“Not before, I’m afraid,” said Kate, and on Mrs. Burke’s promise that if she would send the key beforehand, the house should be aired and warmed and stocked with food in readiness for them, they exchanged goodbyes and good wishes and rang off. So much for the coward’s way out—by telephone and by proxy! was Kate’s bleak thought as she cradled her receiver. Though had she witnessed it, she might have been puzzled by the look of deep absorption with which Conor’s mother replaced her own.
Between Morah Beg and Cork there was a Certain half-mile where the railway and the road ran parallel, and on Friday it was at that point that Kate’s train, chugging east, and Conor’s car, speeding west, briefly touched paths and went on their way.
At the Lakestrand Conor left his car in the forecourt, his passage from there to his office resembling that of a minor tornado as he swept up a pile of letters from the reception-desk, was handed the luncheon menu at the door of the dining-room and flushed a benchful of bellboys enjoying a private bingo session behind a bank of flowers.
In his office he went straight to the telephone and was using it when Mrs. Burke came into the room.
“Ah, you’re back, son,” she began at the same moment as he took the receiver from his ear, pointing at it. “What’s with this thing?” he demanded. “Coming down and meeting the train at Simonscross, it struck me that, with her car laid up, Kate will need transport on Monday, and I was going to tell her not to order any, as I’d take her to the airport myself. But there’s no reply from her number, and the exchange has just said the line has been cut off!”
Mrs. Burke nodded. “So it would be, for Kate would have had it done before she left. And the reason that there’s no answer from her is that she’s not there.”
“Not there? She must be! She isn’t leaving for England until Monday—And if she isn’t there, where then?”
“At this moment, on her way to Cork, or maybe she’s there by now, the way she’s planning to catch today’s three o’clock plane to Belfast and so to England on Monday. And if you met the train, she was on it, for that’s how she meant to go.”
“And what,” rapped out Conor, “is she doing, flying to England by way of Belfast three days early, and she with a dinner date with me for Sunday night?”
Mrs. Burke said, “Ah, she had to cry off that. I told her you’d surely understand, for it’s a weekend visit to Lady Soames that’s taken her to Belfast, and isn’t Dennis Regan there already?”
“He is. What of it?”
“You could ask yourself, son—”
“I’m asking you”
There was a moment’s pause. Then Mrs. Burke suggested, “Well, couldn’t it be that Kate has been invited because, with no people of his own for her to meet, he wants to show her to his in-laws, the only people he does have, and in their turn they want to meet her?”
“For what purpose?”
Mrs. Burke wagged a reproving finger. “Now you’re being deliberately obtuse, Conor. For wasn’t it yourself who said there was no doubt of how things were between Dennis and Kate? So if you can think of a better reason for Kate’s standing you up than that they’re about to announce their engagement, perhaps you’ll tell me what it is? Meanwhile, may I remind you that you still have the receiver off the hook, the way you may be keeping someone off the line?”
Conor’s only reply to that was to bang the receiver into place and to stalk over to the window where presently he said into the silence, “Kate is catching the three o’clock flight for Belfast?”
“She is.” A pause. Then, “It’s nearer one than half-twelve now, son—”
Conor whipped about, his jaw thrust forward aggressively. “And what might you mean by that, Mother?” he asked.
“Just that you could have time to come up with her if you left now, if you hurried and always supposing you want to get your word in first—”
“I’m not in the habit of poaching other men’s girls from them!”
“No. But remember, you wouldn’t let me get proof positive they mean to marry, and if Kate were still havering over whether or not to take Dennis, should you be wasting this last chance to get her for yourself instead?”
In a couple of strides Conor was back across the room, a hand beneath each of his mother’s elbows in a vice-like grip.
“You—! How did you know? In fortune’s name, Mother, how did you?”
She looked up at him, her bright eyes a-dance. “Signs and portents, son. Signs and portents! Lately you’ve been laying clues as thick on the ground as confetti—”
“I have not!” he denied. “Even Kate herself hasn’t had so much as a hint!”
“Then it’s high time you gave her one. She can always turn you down, and hasn’t a girl the right to as many scalps for her belt as she can get? So? Do I take it you’ll be skipping your lunch and going back by the way you came—or do I?”
To that Conor’s only reply was a mock-vicious tweak to her crisp hair, a kiss which misfired altogether and the slamming of the door behind him. His car engine raced a minute or two later.
Left alone—“You sharp-practising old schemer, you!” Mrs. Burke scolded herself, and made a deliberate business of crossing each forefinger over its neighbour as a talisman against the lie-by-omission she had tacitly told.
Kate’s train had been the only one of the morning and she was early for her flight by more than an hour. On this out-of-season afternoon the air of orderly calm of the reception hall was that of a well-run provincial railway station, and while she waited she amused herself by trying to guess which of the later arrivals would disappear on other flights, which would make up the party for her own.
There was a be-toqued dowager, looking so old that her first travels must surely have been by the steam trains of the. ’eighties; a young mother with two children, the elder rather blasé about flying, the younger apprehensive and already slightly green ... an amateur close-harmony group giving a free performance (or were they only practising on an audience who couldn’t get away?); a caged dog waiting resignedly for shipment; two serene-faced nuns; a prosperous-looking man, loud in complaint over his excess baggage charge, and many others, all of them possible bearers of boarding-cards identical with Kate’s and so linked by the camaraderie of air-travel from the moment they took their seats until they parted at journey’s end.
The prosperous man, it emerged, was bound for Birmingham, the nuns for London, and Kate’s guesswork was selecting some congenial newcomers to take their place when suddenly her gaze fixed and her heart plunged ... as Conor, loping, thrusting, side-stepping, came purposefully towards her as if a magnet drew him.
A yard short of where she sat he stopped, looking at her. Then his foot went out to hook an empty chair towards him at the same time as the loudspeaker announced a slight delay of take-off on the Belfast flight. He heard the message out, looked at his watch, said, “Fair enough—that should give us as much time as we’ll need,” and then accused Kate. “What do you mean by sloping off like this, three days early, and you and I with a date on Sunday?”
Kate bridled. “I didn’t slope off. That is, I told Mrs. Burke why,” she defended herself. Then as a thought struck her, “Or perhaps you haven’t seen her? Perhaps you’re only now on your way home?”
“I am not,” said Conor. “I’ve been home; I’ve seen my mother and heard from her that you had already left—”
“Then you must know why!” put in Kate. “Mrs. Burke promised to tell you and apologise to you for me!”
“And how could she, and you not telling her yourself, but leaving us both to draw our own conclusions as to why you had to be off to Belfast in such a hurry!”
Kate protested hotly, “But I did tell her! I did! About Lady Soames’s invitation to spend the weekend on my way to London, that being my only chance to see this cine-film she has of Norah and Tom in Kuwait—”
“This what?”
“A film. Lady Soames’s sister and her husband took it on a visit to Kuwait. I heard about it from Norah by the same post as Lady Soames asked me to Belfast so that I could see it—”
“And see Dennis Regan too?”
“Dennis too, naturally. He’s staying there. Anyway, I explained all this to Mrs. Burke by phone and she promised she would see you understood about Sunday.”
“Though without telling me what it was I had to understand!” Conor gritted his teeth at the absent Mrs. Burke. “Mother, you wait! You just wait!” he threatened her, then demanded of Kate, “Do you know what she hinted instead was the reason for your going to Belfast today instead of direct to London on Monday? That you were going to be vetted by these Soames people before you and Regan announced your engagement!”
Kate’s gasp of incredulity brought several heads turning in her direction. “But that’s nonsense! I’m going for no other reason than the one I’ve told you, and how your mother gained any other impression, I can’t imagine.”
“If you ask me, she never did.”
“Then why on earth—?”
“At a guess, shock tactics for me.”
“For you? I don’t understand.”
Conor said crisply, “You wouldn’t, though I begin to, and to realise I’m son to a shrewder woman than I knew. However, can’t you guess what brought me hunting you here with her blessing and connivance?”
Kate shook her head. “Except that you were annoyed at my breaking our date, I can’t think why you should bother.”
His direct gaze demanded hers and held it. “Even though I’d been led to believe you were going to clinch matters with Regan? D’you say you’ve no idea, why I should have raced to catch you in this public place for very fear you’d be away out of it before I could say to you, ‘I love you, Kate. Marry me. Marry me for the love that’s in me for you, not him for anything less.’ For whatever there is between you and Regan, it is less than love, isn’t it? Isn’t it?” he urged.
Momentarily everything about her blurred before Kate’s eyes. Then she assured him, “There’s nothing between Dennis and me that adds up to marriage. I confess we’ve discussed it, but we’ve both agreed we couldn’t do it. After Belfast I’m going back to my job as you know I’ve planned, and he is going over to America alone. But you—claiming to love me! That’s—absurd. You’ve never—We’ve never—Oh no, it’s not true! It can’t be. For one thing, if it were, why should you have waited until now to tell me so?” She stopped, knowing she was babbling, despising herself for it, not daring to hope—
Conor sat forward, making of their closeness a small intimate island in the sea of comings and goings about them.
He echoed, “Why didn’t I tell you? Because at first you were tied up with that fellow Kent, and you had no eyes at all for me. Besides, at the time he threw you over I had too much stiff pride in me to want you on the rebound from him. Then there was Regan, all set to appeal to your pity for him; everything in common between you, and your father’s approval thrown in. I knew how you’d waste yourself if you took him, but on the very night I had pegged myself to telling you so, what happened? There were you and he on the lake-shore under my office window, seemingly with it all settled between you, and the two of you kissing as mildly and blandly as if you were thirty years married at least—”
Kate started. “That was—” she began.
He ignored
the interruption. “That really needled me,” he went on. “I said, ‘To hell with competing, if that’s all Kate wants. If she’s prepared to settle for cold-fish stuff like that, then I’m not the man for her, nor she the woman for me.’ Call me a stiffnecked fool if you like. But at the time I also had the Davenport woman at my shoulder, hinting that it was Regan’s fortune you were after. For that I slung her out. But it stayed to rankle. Poison does.”
Kate agreed gravely, “If you let it. But I remember the night you mean, and I think I ought to tell you that Hester Davenport’s version of how you parted was quite different from yours.”
“It would be. Don’t tell me—there’s no need. You’ll have heard that I lured her to my room for my evil pleasure and had the door locked on her until she blackmailed me into letting her go. Whereas—” Conor broke off to explode, “No, I’ll not waste the little time we have. You must take my word that when I ‘lured’ that she-wolf to my office in order to warn her off my premises for good, she turned the key in the door herself, not knowing I had a spare one and could be rid of her exactly when I chose. All that has nothing to do with now, with us, with this—Oh, Kate, would you sit there as you’re doing, letting me tell you how much I love you, if you weren’t going to give me any hope at all?”
Kate expelled a long sigh. “Conor dear, if you only knew how long I’ve been in love with you, you wouldn’t need to ask what hope you have!” she told him.
He stared, then pounced on a word. “Long, do you say? How long?”
“As long as—Oh, how can I tell? How does one?” she appealed. “At first I know I resented all I thought you stood for on the Lake. But even then you mattered in some odd way. Once, I remember, Hester Davenport taunted me with having a love-hate thing for you. But if I had, the hate didn’t last ... the love did—”
“And if it did, if you aren’t just saying so out of kindness, what in heaven’s name have you been at, not letting me guess it? And loving me, how could you be toying with the thought of marrying Regan?” Conor challenged jealously.