Curious to see what it was all about she rang the bell for her maid and hastily began dressing. By the time the girl arrived Arethusa had pulled on her stockings and undergarments and was ready for her corset. ‘What’s going on out there, Eily?’ she demanded.
Eily, barely fourteen with black hair brushed half-heartedly into an untidy bun, blue eyes that were both watchful and sour and a sulky, petulant mouth that let out tuts and sighs in spite of her mother telling her over and over how lucky she was to be employed at the castle, pulled tight the laces of Arethusa’s corset. ‘They’ve come to sweep the chimneys, miss,’ she replied.
‘What? All of them?’
Eily let the laces slacken. ‘No, miss. That’s why they’re fighting. Lord Deverill said he’ll pay five shillings a chimney as old McNally has died, God rest his soul, ’n’ there’s no one to do his work. Now half the town’s come offering his services.’
‘Do hurry up, Eily!’ Arethusa exclaimed impatiently. ‘Can’t your hands and mouth work at the same time?’
‘Sorry, miss,’ Eily replied, then kept her mouth shut as she concentrated on finishing the job. At last the corset was in place. Eily helped Arethusa into her skirt, which, as she intended to go out walking, was shorter than her other skirts, reaching her ankle. Arethusa fastened the small pearl buttons on her blouse herself as Eily clasped the skirt from behind with clumsy fingers.
‘Your hair, miss?’ Eily asked, stretching for the ivory brush and tortoiseshell comb which lay on the dressing table among pretty glass pots with silver lids and trinket boxes full of jewellery. Arethusa’s thick brown hair was long and tangled but she didn’t have the patience for brushing and she was too old now, at seventeen, to be told to do so by her governess.
‘Later,’ she said, hurrying out into the corridor and running down the stairs to the hall.
When Arethusa entered the dining room her grandfather Greville, Lord Deverill, was at the head of the long oak table, speaking to O’Flynn, the butler. Greville’s sweeping white moustache twitched as he listened to O’Flynn explaining the situation outside. ‘You see, m’lord, we don’t know who arrived first and they’re all claiming entitlement to the job.’
Elizabeth, Lady Deverill, listened from her chair at the opposite end of the table. At seventy-four she was not only hard of hearing but a little on the heavy side too, which put pressure on her joints and gave her the need of a walking stick. Wrapped in shiny black silk with ruffles and frills rising up her neck like feathers, she resembled one of the exotic black hens she kept in the castle grounds (and allowed to wander freely in the hall in the summertime, much to O’Flynn’s disapproval). Her pudgy, bejewelled fingers reached for her teacup, into which she had dropped three spoonfuls of sugar and poured a generous amount of cream. ‘My dear, there are forty chimneys to be swept, why doesn’t each man do one?’
Greville glanced at his wife and his moustache twitched now with irritation. ‘No one will want to do a single chimney for five shillings, Elizabeth,’ he said, raising his voice so that she could hear.
Rupert, the youngest of Arethusa’s two brothers, who was seated beside Charlotte, Arethusa’s dowdy governess, grinned at his sister. Typically, he was finding the conundrum highly entertaining. Aged twenty-three Rupert was handsome with chiselled, aristocratic features, glossy cocoa-coloured hair, deep-set brown eyes and full, sensual lips, which were always curling with amusement, usually at the most inopportune moments. Now was one of those moments because his grandfather was not finding the situation remotely funny. He did not want to be bothered with tiresome domestic matters. His interest lay in hunting, shooting, fishing and socializing with his neighbours, as it always had. This was really a matter for Lady Deverill, but as she had just demonstrated with her ridiculous suggestion, she was not, in his opinion, capable.
‘You could always put names in a hat, Grandpa,’ said Rupert with an apologetic shrug because he knew his grandfather would not appreciate his contribution to what was already becoming a ‘bothersome situation’. It was well known that Lord Deverill had little patience for those. Greville grunted and ignored his grandson’s unhelpful suggestion.
Arethusa sat down opposite Rupert, on her grandfather’s left, and unfolded a napkin onto her lap. ‘They’re all frightfully cross,’ she said, catching Rupert’s eye and glowering at him. This just made him smile all the more. He pretended to rub his chin thoughtfully to hide it. ‘They’re hungry, their families are hungry and they need work. You may find this hilarious, Rupert, but for those men a week being employed to sweep chimneys might save the family from starvation.’
Elizabeth appeared to let Arethusa’s impassioned words pass over her head, like she did with things that were uncomfortable or unsavoury, or perhaps she just didn’t hear, and sipped her tea. ‘We must pay them all, Greville. Problem solved.’ She waved a hand to dismiss the subject like she would a butler or a maid.
‘Five shillings is hardly going to sustain them for very long, Grandma,’ Arethusa protested.
‘What?’ Elizabeth shouted, but Arethusa couldn’t be bothered to repeat herself, or to argue with a woman who simply didn’t understand. She caught Charlotte’s eye, but the governess, who was as quiet and timid as a dormouse, said nothing. Charlotte might as well not have been there, for no one noticed her and she made no attempt to draw their attention, silently eating her breakfast with slow, careful movements as if afraid that any sharp action might remind them of her presence.
‘We’ve bought a set of sweep’s brooms, apparently, which join together like fishing rods,’ said Rupert. ‘Surely one of the footmen can do it.’
‘And send those poor men away?’ Arethusa exclaimed. ‘How could you even suggest such a thing, Rupert?’
‘Send who away?’ asked Elizabeth, confused. ‘Who are you going to send away? Not the chimney sweeps, I hope. We do need those chimneys swept or they’ll catch fire. We don’t want Castle Deverill to catch fire! That would be a great pity.’
Greville was now tired of the subject and his wife’s inane comments. He put his spectacles on the bridge of his nose, opened the Irish Times and resumed his reading. ‘O’Flynn, choose a couple of men and show them the chimneys.’ He raised his eyes at his granddaughter, adding, ‘We can’t very well pay them all.’ Then he was gone behind the paper.
Rupert and Arethusa dutifully changed the subject and began to argue playfully about which one of their grandmother’s hens laid the tastiest eggs. Charlotte listened but said nothing. She had been Arethusa’s governess for ten years and knew her charge as well as a mother knows her child, but in the last few years Arethusa had grown distant and everything Charlotte did appeared to irritate her. As a consequence, she tried to do very little. She had never been good at asserting her authority.
The door opened and a fragrant spring breeze swept into the dining room, bringing with it Arethusa and Rupert’s mother, Adeline, pink-faced and bright-eyed from her morning ride over the hills. Her Titian-red hair fell in thick unruly tendrils down her back, accentuating her small waist below it. In her black riding habit with its white collar and sharply tailored shoulders she cut a dashing figure. If anyone could draw Greville out of his newspaper it was his daughter-in-law, whom he both admired and feared, on account of her beauty and the improper feelings it aroused in him.
‘What a beautiful morning,’ she gushed, beaming a smile. ‘I was accompanied on my ride by mavis and ouzel-cock, blackbird and mistle thrush. How I love spring and all the little birds who frolic in the gorse and bracken. It’s such a joy to be outside. It’s left me ravenously hungry, though. O’Flynn, I’d love eggs, scrambled, please, and bacon, crispy, almost burnt. You know how I like it.’
O’Flynn gave a bow and left the dining room.
Greville folded the newspaper and put it on the table beside him. He looked at Adeline and his tough old face softened and his eyes grew wistful. ‘Did you hear the cuckoo this morning, my dear?’ he asked softly.
Adeline took the chai
r between her father-in-law and Rupert and sat down. ‘I did, Greville,’ she replied. ‘I heard it at dawn. It was still dark and yet, as I went to my window, the sun was just beginning to burn a hole through the eastern sky.’
‘Beautifully put, my dear,’ Greville muttered, shaking his head at the sheer wonder of this woman who appreciated nature like he did. All Elizabeth loved were her silly hens and cake. No one loved cake more, or ate it with more relish, than Lady Deverill. He raised his fluffy white eyebrows and glanced shiftily down the table, but his wife was much too busy buttering a third slice of toast to notice him flirting with his daughter-in-law.
‘Did you see any fairies on your ride, Mama?’ Rupert asked, affectionately teasing his mother who believed in leprechauns, angels and fairies and claimed to see the spirits of the departed with the same frequency with which she saw real people.
Adeline laughed. ‘Darling Rupert, if I said I heard nothing but birdsong you’d be bitterly disappointed.’
‘Or the banshee!’ He pulled his face into a silent scream. ‘Ahhhhhh!’
‘Good Lord, you pair of sillies!’ exclaimed Arethusa, rolling her eyes. ‘With respect, Mama, you’re very easy to tease. You know there were no ghosts or haunted houses until after the Reformation. They were invented by the new Protestants to make up for the lost saints. It’s only primitive people who need to believe in all that rubbish.’
‘I disagree, Tussy dear,’ interrupted Elizabeth through a mouthful of toast. ‘I’ve often seen spirits wandering the castle corridors. This place is full of them.’
Rupert chuckled. ‘That’s just Grandpa sleepwalking, Grandma,’ he said.
Elizabeth, who could not hear above her chewing, missed his comment, but Greville heard it and he chuckled too. ‘Well said, Rupert.’ Greville only tolerated Adeline’s love of the paranormal because she was easy on the eye. ‘Fancy taking the dogs out with me this morning?’ he asked his grandson. ‘We could shoot a few snipes or the odd rabbit and hare – or take a shot at a poacher,’ he chuckled again. ‘What d’you say, Rupert?’
‘I’d love to, Grandpa,’ Rupert replied half-heartedly, putting his napkin on the table with a sigh. He wasn’t keen on the great outdoors and was notoriously incompetent with a gun. Killing living things was not his idea of entertainment and, as for poachers, he didn’t think it fair to deny hungry people a free meal every now and then. ‘After I’ve done a bit of writing,’ he added.
‘Poetry?’ Greville retorted with a grimace, as if writing poetry was an absurd thing for a man to do.
‘Yes, I’m putting together a book of poems.’
‘Very well, if you must.’ Greville turned to Adeline. ‘When’s Bertie back?’ Bertie was Rupert’s older brother of twenty-five, who was made in the image of his father Hubert, and grandfather. While Rupert enjoyed sitting in the warm library (one of the only warm rooms in the castle) playing cards, composing poetry and reading, Bertie preferred to be outside, preferably on a horse, in pursuit of a fox or a hare. Bertie was the sort of man Greville understood, the sort of man he could share things with. Rupert on the other hand, albeit undeniably charming and witty, was a puzzle to him.
‘Bertie and Hubert will be back from London the day after tomorrow,’ said Adeline.
‘Good. In time for the next meet.’
‘They wouldn’t want to miss that,’ said Adeline with a smile.
‘And neither would you, my dear,’ said Greville, his voice heavy with admiration for there was not a single woman in the county to rival Adeline on a horse. She rode side-saddle with both elegance and courage, jumping hedges many men would not even dare attempt.
‘I’m surprised they lasted this long,’ said Arethusa of her father and brother who had now spent nearly a month with their cousins, Stoke and Augusta, known as the London Deverills. ‘I couldn’t spend more than a day with Cousin Augusta. She has the social endurance of an armchair.’
Rupert laughed. ‘And the hide of one too!’ he added mischievously.
At that Arethusa roared with laughter a little on the coarse side for a young lady of her breeding. ‘The hide of a leather armchair,’ she exclaimed.
‘Now you two are being a pair of sillies!’ said Adeline, trying to restrain her smile.
‘Cousin Stoke is a very patient man,’ rejoined Greville, then, glancing at his wife, who was enviously eyeing the plate of scrambled eggs and bacon O’Flynn was bringing in for Adeline, he added beneath his breath, ‘As indeed am I.’
After breakfast Elizabeth went out to feed her hens, Greville to take the dogs for a walk over the glen, Rupert retreated to the library to write by the cold hearth (until the amateur chimney sweeps had finished cleaning and the fire was lit once more) and Adeline went upstairs to change out of her riding habit. Since her mother-in-law had grown old, and dotty, the responsibilities of chatelaine had fallen on her shoulders. This involved answering letters, keeping accounts, attending the Ballinakelly branch of the Needlework Guild and other charitable organizations, and receiving the poor who came to the castle door daily with their woes and their requests, to whom she would give a kind word and a sovereign.
Charlotte suggested she and Arethusa go for a walk, but Arethusa shrugged her off impatiently with a ‘Not now, Charlotte, I’m going to visit my aunts’ and put on her coat and hat and hurried off to the stables to ask Mr McCarthy, the groom, to prepare the pony and trap. She planned to go into Ballinakelly with food for the Coakley family, whose three children were so painfully malnourished it kept her awake at night worrying. Charlotte, who knew she should chaperone Arethusa every time she left the castle grounds, had no reason to disbelieve her and watched her go, knowing that she was powerless to stop her even if she wished to. Arethusa was strong, wilful and had become, of late, quite intimidating. The governess settled herself into her small sitting room, which was next to her bedroom on the top floor of the castle, and took up her needlepoint. She hoped Mrs Deverill, Arethusa’s mother, would not think her remiss, but Adeline’s sisters lived very close, in Ballinakelly, and Charlotte did not think it necessary to accompany her there. Arethusa, in turn, felt bad; it was so easy to get round Charlotte that it just wasn’t sporting.
As Arethusa approached with a basket of food and milk, Mr Duggan, the head gardener, put down his pitchfork and wandered across the stable yard to talk to her. He had a worried expression on his weathered brown face.
‘Miss Arethusa, might I have a word?’ he asked, taking off his cap and releasing a bounty of black curls.
‘What is it, Duggan?’
‘’Tis the young Mrs Foley, miss. Her baby—’
‘Is it sick?’
‘No, ’tis not sick, miss, but there’s trouble and ’twill be worse tomorrow than it is today,’ he added darkly. ‘If ’twill be living at all.’
Arethusa was alarmed. ‘Then I must go to her at once.’
‘Thank you, Miss Arethusa.’
‘Perhaps I should call the doctor?’
Mr Duggan shook his head. ‘I don’t think it’s a doctor she’ll be needing, Miss Arethusa. Indeed, I think you’ll be better than any medical man.’
Puzzled, Arethusa watched him replace his cap. She went in search of Mr McCarthy. She found him in the stable block, sitting on a stool polishing a saddle. ‘Good morning, Miss Arethusa,’ he said, standing up. ‘Will you be wanting the brougham?’
‘Pony and trap will do. At once. I need to go to the young Foleys.’
Mr McCarthy nodded and slowly put the saddle on the saddle rack. Arethusa paced the cobbles impatiently while Mr McCarthy wandered off at a leisurely pace to attach the pony to the trap. Arethusa, whose every movement was dynamic, could not understand a man who went through life as if wading through treacle. She bit her nails apprehensively and wondered what the problem could be. Perhaps it was distant in mind, she mused, as one poor child had been whom Adeline had had to take to the Children’s Hospital in Dublin. Arethusa often thought of asking her mother to accompany her on her missions,
but Adeline, although sympathetic to the poor, did not like to get too close, fearful as she was of disease. If she knew how often Arethusa visited them and how close she got to the diseased, she would be horrified.
At last the pony and trap was walked round to the stable yard and Arethusa climbed up onto the seat and took the reins. With a brisk shake, the pony set off up the track.
How magnificent it is, Arethusa thought as she made her way round to the front of the castle. With its grey-stone walls and imposing towers and turrets, it had the appearance of a magical castle in a fairy tale. Barton Deverill, the first Lord Deverill of Ballinakelly, must have not only been fanciful but ambitious too, she mused, as her eyes rested for a moment on the family motto carved into the stone above the big front door: Castellum Deverilli est suum regnum. A Deverill’s castle is his kingdom. The trap rattled past the castle and on towards the end of the long, curved drive where the big iron gates were open in anticipation of her departure.
Arethusa went down the lane towards Ballinakelly and looked into the dark, mossy wood that lined her way. She thought of the superstitions that made people fearful of going there. They said it was full of ghosts and wandering dead. Some claimed to have seen a woman in white floating through it, others the spirits of men killed by Cromwell’s soldiers. Mr McCarthy swore he’d seen the ghost of a captain trying in vain to find the ocean. All Arethusa could see were ancient boughs bursting with new green leaves, rhododendron bushes about to flower into explosions of pink and red and purple, and birds and butterflies basking in the sunshine. She saw nothing that would incite fear, only beauty in the thicket of lichened, weather-beaten trees that dispelled all trace of it.
The Secret Hours Page 7