Chapter Twenty-One
It was a very tired Nathan Brock who arrived in Kilmar the next morning. There had been ample time during the walk from the Wicklow mountains for him to consider the news of his family more carefully. During the dark hours the doubts closed in about him. He became convinced that his weakened family could not have survived the onslaught of black fever.
Many of the more morbid thoughts left him when the sun came up to chase away the darkness, but he was prepared for the worst. When he saw not a single cottier on the quayside, or wandering the streets of Kilmar, he felt sure the black fever must have taken them all.
He made his way to the McCabe house and Liam opened the door to him.
‘Nathan! We have been enquiring throughout Ireland for you. Where have you been?’
‘My family, Liam. Shelagh … the boys …?’
Liam saw the agony on Nathan Brock’s face.
‘They are all right, Nathan. Every one of them. They are fine.’
Nathan Brock’s shoulders sagged with relief and suddenly his knees felt very weak. Liam put an arm about his shoulders and led him inside the house to a chair.
‘Coming along the road this morning I didn’t dare hope. Then, as I neared the village, I saw the empty streets. No cottiers … not even a fishing boat out at sea. I thought the fever must have taken everyone.’
Liam laughed. ‘Where have you been that days no longer matter, Nathan? It is Sunday. All the good Kilmar people are in church and most of the cottiers have left us for the new soup kitchen in Gorey.’
‘Shelagh and the boys, they are in Gorey?’
‘No, Lady Caroline has taken them to a cottage up at Inch House. Shelagh still needed some nursing when one of the Quaker doctors died and his companions left Kilmar in a hurry. Shelagh is able to do some light work for her. As for the boys, you would not know they had ever been ill.’
‘God Bless Lady Caroline. I’ll be leaving you now, Liam. I must go to them.’
‘Not so fast, Nathan. You’ll have a bite to eat first and tell me all the news. You’d best clean up a bit, too, while I find you a shirt and some trousers. They will be a little tight for you, but they will do. You go up to the house looking as you are and you will never get past the gate-keeper.’
Nathan Brock looked down at his tattered and dirty rags and grinned sheepishly. He was no better dressed than any other wanderer on the roads of Ireland.
‘I’ll come up to the big house with you,’ said Liam. ‘Lady Caroline has half the cottiers in County Wexford working on the estate, and I promised to take some fish up there for them.’
Norah McCabe returned to the house before Nathan Brock had finished cleaning up and insisted on cooking a huge meal for him. He was able to repay her generosity by giving her the good news of Dermot’s improved health.
On the way to Inch House Liam told Nathan Brock of the demise of the Kilmar soup kitchen. Father Clery had kept it going for a week after the hasty departure of the two Quakers, but the cottiers had poured in from the surrounding countryside in their thousands. It soon became quite impossible to feed them all and, in a desperate bid to secure food for themselves and their families, the cottiers had fought among themselves, the brawls spilling over into the streets of Kilmar and involving the fishermen. This, together with the very real danger of black fever spreading to the villagers, decided Father Clery, reluctantly, to close down his soup kitchen in Kilmar.
The cottiers had immediately moved to Gorey where an English charity had set up a kitchen. Meanwhile, Lady Caroline was feeding the families of the workers on her brother’s estate and had taken on twice as many men as were needed. They were building walls and roads, digging ditches and trimming hedges anything to keep them going until the new season’s potatoes were ready for digging.
‘It sounds as though I and the cottiers of County Wexford have reason to thank this Lady Caroline Dudley,’ said Nathan Brock sincerely. ‘Without her there would have been little relief in this part of Ireland – and none at all from England.’
‘No,’ agreed Liam. ‘But they were quick enough to send soldiers.’ He told Nathan Brock of the visits the Army had made to Kilmar, of the smashing of the boats and the outcome of their last visit, when Caroline had sent them scurrying away.
‘The more I hear of this Lady Caroline, the more I like her,’ said Nathan Brock. ‘Did you get to know her well when you stayed at her London house?’
‘Yes.’
Nathan Brock waited for Liam to amplify his curt reply, but he remained silent.
‘Is she an elderly woman? She must be, I suppose, to have a husband with such an important post in the Treasury.’
‘She is no older than me.’
Liam’s reticence began to intrigue Nathan Brock.
‘Is she pretty?’
Liam remained silent for so long that Nathan Brock thought he was not going to give him a reply, but then Liam said softly, ‘Lady Caroline is not a woman you would refer to as “pretty”. Beautiful, she certainly is. Prettiness is for lesser women. Now, tell me more about the fights you had … and Jeremy. Can you trust him to keep a close watch on Eoin Feehan?’
Nathan Brock accepted the change of topic, but Liam’s reluctance to talk about Lady Caroline Dudley told him almost as much as Eugene Brennan had learned from seeing the two of them together – and he was as concerned for Liam as Brennan had been.
He was even more worried when they arrived at the great house and he met Lady Caroline for the first time. Liam was right: she was a very beautiful woman. Until that moment, Nathan Brock had thought Liam was nursing a secret passion for a woman who, by reason of her station in life, was unapproachable. Now he could see that she had eyes only for Liam. He could foresee serious trouble for his friend. At some time in the future he would find a way to talk to Liam about it – but, for now, Nathan Brock had other matters on his mind.
Caroline was delighted to meet Nathan Brock. ‘Shelagh and the boys are all well,’ she told him. ‘And now you are here they will be the happiest family in County Wexford. But you do not want to listen to my idle chatter. Come.’
The cottage in which Caroline had housed the Brock family was very small, but it was stone-built and had a sizeable garden. In a good year a man could grow potatoes and vegetables for his own family and have enough left over to sell at a small profit.
Shelagh Brock was working in the garden, helped by her two young boys, as they approached. When she saw them, she straightened her back and put a hand to her forehead to shield her eyes from the sun.
When recognition came, her mouth opened to cry out but no sound emerged. Then she began running, leaving her startled children to wonder what was happening.
Liam and Caroline hung back until the emotional reunion had run its course and Nathan Brock stood beaming happily with a small boy in his arms, the other clinging to his hand. Shelagh Brock was streaking dirt across her face as she tried unsuccessfully to wipe away her tears with a dirt-stained hand.
When Nathan Brock began brokenly to thank Caroline, she hurriedly cut him short.
‘Shelagh has been a boon in the house – and if only half of what I have been told about you is true you are going to be just as useful to me. I own a four-hundred-acre section of the Inch estate and this would seem to be a good time to build a house. I will, of course, bring in architects and expert landscapers, but I need someone to supervise the labour. I would like you to take on that task – and at the same time help me to run my brother’s estate. I fear that at times the cottiers are too much for the present manager to handle.’
Nathan Brock was delighted to accept her offer, and as Liam and Caroline walked back to Inch House from the cottage Liam said, ‘You have ensured that there will be no trouble during the building of your house. There is not a man in Ireland foolish enough to risk upsetting Nathan Brock – and he feels he owes you a debt that will never be repaid in this life.’
‘I wish it were as simple to solve the cottiers’ pr
oblems. I fear that many of them will not live to harvest the new season’s potatoes. There must be something more we can do for them, Liam.’
He looked at her and saw the strain on her face together with a tiredness he had never seen there before.
‘I think you are already doing everything that is humanly possible. This is not a problem that any one person can solve; it is on far too vast a scale. The English Government will need to send shiploads of grain – and send them quickly.’
‘Perhaps Eugene will be able to persuade Richard. If he can impress him with the seriousness of the situation in the whole of the country, I am sure Richard will send a report to Sir Robert Peel and bring help quickly.’
‘He might – if only Sir Richard would see him,’ replied Liam angrily. ‘It seems that your husband is a very busy man. So busy that he has been unable to spare a few minutes for Eugene, in the three weeks he has been trying to see him.’
Caroline stopped and looked at Liam in surprise. ‘Are you sure of this?’
‘Father Clery has been to Dublin and returned only yesterday. Eugene is so disheartened he is talking of giving up and going to London to speak to Peel himself. Is Sir Richard really so busy?’
‘I don’t know. I have not seen him for more than a month. But I shall go to Dublin right away. Richard will see Eugene if I have to take him into his office myself.’
‘Don’t push yourself too hard, Caroline. You are doing wonderful work here and the cottiers need you.’
‘Only the cottiers, Liam? Not you?’
Her voice was husky with a recognisable longing, and Liam tried not to look at her.
‘What either of us needs, or desires, is not important at this time, Caroline. Our people need you – and they need the help of your husband.’
Liam’s rebuff was painful, but Caroline accepted it. ‘I can give myself, Liam. I cannot make promises on behalf of Richard.’
‘Neither of us should make promises that can’t be fulfilled, Caroline. You are married and we live in different worlds. You have been to Kilmar. You have seen my home.’
‘There is only one world, Liam, and we both came into it in the same way. You are referring to social barriers. They are put up by people who do not care to be reminded that they are no different from the beggar who sits on the street-corner, or the man who cleans out the stables. My grandfather was the first Earl of Inch, Liam. He was given the title and these estates because he was a brilliant soldier at a time when England desperately needed such a man. He was also incredibly reckless, both in his soldiering and in his private life. Had he not been made a peer he might well have been committed to prison for debt. Perhaps it was the thought of this that made him such a brave and fearless soldier. Be that as it may, my own father was once sent home from school because his fees had not been paid.
‘Think about it, Liam. Had my grandfather not had Napoleon to fight I would have been born to poverty. I could have been gutting fish on Kilmar quay, or perhaps tramping the lanes, dressed in rags and begging for my food. It is something I remind myself about often when I lose patience with a cottier who quarrels over a scrap of food, or when the sheer enormity of the famine threatens to overwhelm me.’
Caroline spoke with such honesty and feeling that Liam looked at her with a new respect, but words could change nothing.
‘I am glad you told me, Caroline. There was a time, in London, when I, too, believed there was no barrier you and I could not overcome. I told myself that the rules had been made for other people and that wanting each other as we did would be enough. Then I learned about your husband and came down to earth with a big bump. You probably think I am a simpleton, but….’
Liam’s words tailed away and he made a helpless gesture with his hands.
‘Oh no, Liam! I have never thought that – and the last thing I ever wanted was to hurt you. I….’ She looked at Liam as though seeking an answer to some unasked question. Her shoulders sagged and she said quietly, ‘As you say, I have Richard. And I must go to Dublin to see him.’
They walked on in silence until they reached a place where Liam’s way home took him away from the path to the big house.
‘Perhaps I should go back to London and out of your life for ever, Liam. You would soon find yourself a good strong Irish girl to give you handsome children and make your mother happy.’
Caroline was watching Liam’s face as she spoke, and of a sudden her eyes widened as, inexplicably, her words conjured up a picture of Kathie Donaghue in Liam’s mind.
‘There is a girl, Liam! Who? When? No, I have no right to ask anything. You have your own life to lead. I have interfered enough….’
With all her sophistication gone, Caroline looked like a little girl who suddenly realises she is lost, but when Liam reached out a hand to her she turned and fled away along the path to the big house, leaving Liam with a strong and bewildering feeling of guilt.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Although Eugene Brennan found Sir Richard Dudley’s reluctance to see him increasingly frustrating, the politician did not waste his time in Dublin. He canvassed all the influential men of the city. In addition to the money they donated to his relief fund, he drew promises from them to bring increased pressure to bear upon the English Government to get it to allocate money and food to the cottiers.
Eugene Brennan’s task was made easier because it was known that the outbreak of fever in the soldiers’ barracks had been caused by contact with the cottiers of Kilmar. The merchants and businessmen of Ireland’s capital feared the black fever more than the wrath of government.
The Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland received many unwanted petitions from men of influence, requesting immediate aid for the starving populace. Helpless to act himself, the Lord-Lieutenant passed them on to the Prime Minister.
Sir Robert Peel was himself receiving many such pleas and he realised that the time was fast approaching when he would have to bow to opinion and do something to help the Irish. Yet he was reluctant to spend the money acquired through his recently imposed ‘income tax’ on such relief. Instead, he announced plans to abolish the controversial corn laws, whereby the crops of English and Irish land-owners were protected by the ridiculously high duty charged on imported corn. By so doing, he hoped to attract sufficient grain to Ireland to alleviate the desperate situation there.
Unfortunately, the Prime Minister seemed unaware that there was a world shortage of grain. Far from bringing relief to Ireland, his action would merely precipitate a political storm that would topple Peel and force his Tory party from office.
But all this was still some weeks away when Caroline’s coach left the country lanes behind and clattered along the wide roads of Dublin city.
She went immediately to Eugene Brennan’s house, arriving when the surprised MP was in the middle of a late lunch. Declining an invitation to join him, Caroline came immediately to the purpose of her visit.
‘Liam tells me my husband is refusing to see you?’
‘Perhaps “refusing” is not the correct word. Sir Richard has made no reply to my request for an interview, even though I sent him the letter you so kindly gave to me. Whenever I go to his office I am informed by members of his staff that he is “engaged” or “busy” or, on occasions, “not available”. I realise that his time is valuable, but—’
‘Hurry and finish your lunch, Eugene. I will take you to see him. His staff will not refuse to allow me in.’
Caroline was hot, dusty and bad-tempered. Furthermore, she had a headache – the result of urging the coachman to drive faster over pot-holed roads.
‘Some things are more important than food,’ declared Eugene Brennan, pushing his plate from him and rising to his feet. ‘I am ready to leave immediately.’
Caroline’s mood did not improve on the road to Dublin Castle, where Sir Richard Dudley had his offices. After two attempts to draw her into conversation about the situation in Kilmar, Eugene Brennan lapsed into silence.
The carriage was halted
at the gate to the great grim castle, but Caroline was in no mood for delay and the guard was quick to allow the carriage and its occupants to pass through.
The secretary in charge of Sir Richard Dudley’s outer office did not react with the same speed. When Caroline told him to inform her husband she was there, he looked first at Eugene Brennan and then began to explain that Sir Richard was busy.
Without waiting for the man to finish speaking, Caroline swept past him to the door of the inner office, taking the Irish MP with her.
The startled baronet looked up from the letter he was writing as the door swung open without warning. Seeing his wife, he pushed back his chair and rose to his feet as quickly as he could, his mind groping for an explanation of this unexpected visit.
‘Richard, I sent a letter with Mr Brennan three weeks ago requesting that you see him. As my request has been ignored I had no alternative but to bring him here myself.’
‘My dear, I have been so busy….’
The agitated secretary stood in the doorway wringing his hands and Sir Richard Dudley waved an impatient dismissal.
‘I am delighted to see you.’ He nodded curtly at Eugene Brennan. ‘And you, too, sir. But, Caroline, allow me to offer you a chair.’
‘That will not be necessary for me, Richard. I promised Mr Brennan I would arrange a meeting with you and I regret that I had to go to such lengths in order to keep my word. I am sure you are both busy men so I will hold up your business no longer.’
‘But … Caroline! Where are you staying …? Where can I see you …?’
The baronet started across the room, but Caroline had already reached the door. Opening it, she turned.
‘At Inch House, Richard. Where I have been for some weeks. Goodbye.’
The door banged shut behind her and she was gone.
‘Upon my soul!’ Sir Richard Dudley took a handkerchief from his sleeve and mopped his face. The room had suddenly become unseasonably hot. At a complete loss for words, he shook his head and repeated, ‘Upon my soul!’
The Music Makers Page 20