by Sara Seale
She gazed at him incredulously.
“But what does it matter? I can do it any time. I’ll do it this evening.”
He shook his head at her. ‘
“No, Clancy, you’ll do it in my time,” he said gently, “and that’s now. Go along up to the schoolroom.”
“Kilmallin!” she cried, “he can’t do this to me! You can’t let him do this to me!”
Kevin was enjoying the whole thing.
“Ah, sure, it’s nothing to do with me,” he said. “I only know I want to be off, or we’ll be late. Get in, Brian.”
“You can’t make me!” said Clancy, still trying to pull away from Mark. “You can leave me behind, but you can’t make me write any silly paper.”
“Oh, yes, I can,” he replied, in his expressionless voice. “You see, I’m staying behind too to see that you do it. I’m sorry, Mr. O’Shane, if we’ve spoilt your afternoon, but I’m afraid it can’t be helped.”
“Ah, well, never mind,” said Kevin, opening the door beside him for Brian. “I’m sorry you’ll not be with us, but have my son, haven’t I, Brian, and that’s what matters.”
Clancy shivered and the bitter tears stung her eyes. To be cheated of this glorious afternoon; to watch Brian, who did not want to go, climb into the seat beside his father; to hear the pride in Kilmallin’s voice as he said ‘my son’, and watch them drive away together.
Mark let her go then, and she turned on him a look of utter hatred and fled into the house and upstairs. He followed her slowly, thinking that it was a pity she had made it necessary for him to make a point of discipline at such an early date. He could, of course, have overlooked the first breach and allowed her to write her paper in the evening, but he doubted very much whether it would have lessened her dislike for him, and he had a shrewd suspicion that with Clancy he must begin as he meant to go on.
He found her in the schoolroom, kneeling on the window seat, and hanging half out of the open window. Her back was eloquent of rage and helpless defeat.
“Come and sit down, please,” he said, pulling a chair from the table. “The sooner you make a start the sooner you’ll be free to go.”
She turned then to face him and her eyes were bright with defiance, and perhaps tears.
“You can’t treat me like this,” she cried. “I’m too old—I’m past seventeen—I’m not a schoolgirl any more.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you’re just another pupil and will have to learn to do as you’re told,” he said. “Your age doesn’t concern me at all.”
She stamped her foot.
“Everyone treats me like a child, everyone—even Conn.”
“Perhaps you encourage them,” he observed mildly. “Here are your questions. Sit down and see what you can make of them. It shouldn’t take you more than a couple of hours.”
She sat down in the chair he had placed for her and snatched the paper from him, putting it on the table without looking at it.
“I’m sorry this had to happen, Clancy,” he said, sitting down opposite her, and pulling the half-finished time-table of the morning towards him. “You’ve punished us both, as it happens. I’ve no more desire than you have to be cooped up in the schoolroom all the afternoon.”
She stared across at him, disliking afresh his smooth fair hair and impassive face, the lazy eyes which could hold such a chill.
“You just did it out of spite and pig-headedness. All the English are pig-headed,” she said.
His face did not change, but his voice held faint amusement as he replied:
“I can see I shall have to teach you something about the English while I’m here. You have some very odd ideas. But other things apart, you’re very foolish to run over to Slievaun quite so much. It annoys your father.”
She tugged at her hair violently, her favourite gesture when she was angry.
“If you think you can make trouble for me with Kilmallin over Conn—” she began, but he interrupted a little sharply:
“Oh, really, Clancy, have some sense! I don’t care how often you see your boy friend as long as it doesn’t interfere with your work. It’s your father who’s likely to object. Now keep quiet and read over those questions.”
He took no further notice of her and began filling in the time-table in his firm, neat writing.
Clancy relapsed into silence, but she made no attempt to start work. She folded her arms over her thin little chest and gazed steadily out of the window.
Nearly half an hour went by, then Mark looked up.
“Get on with your work,” he said quietly.
She continued to stare out of the window.
“You can’t make me,” she said. “That’s one thing you can’t me do, if I don’t choose. You can’t make me learn.”
He sighed a little wearily.
“No one can make you learn, if you don’t want to,” he said; “but it’s rather an unintelligent point of view and I shouldn’t have said you were stupid.”
She made no reply.
“Very well. I’m quite prepared to sit here until midnight if necessary. It’s entirely up to you,” he said, and resumed his writing.
Clancy wavered. She was just beginning to know him well enough to realize that he meant what he said. He was perfectly capable of keeping her there through tea, through dinner, even through breakfast the next morning until they both starved. She wanted to give way to the temper of childhood, to scream her dislike of him and kick him hard on his long shins.
He glanced up for a moment.
“I shouldn’t do it,” he said with a faint smile.
“Do what?”
“Throw the ink at me, or whatever you had in mind.”
The room was very quiet after that except for the steady sound of Mark’s pen travelling over the paper. No one in the house seemed to be stirring and the cool sunshine of an Irish summer poured in at the open window and made lazy patterns on the worn carpet. Clancy thought of Brian roystering with Kilmallin, and her heart was sick within her.
Tea-time came and went, but no one disturbed them, for Aunt Bea and the servants thought they were with Kevin. Clancy began to feel hungry. Lunch with Conn had been a sketchy affair, as it so often was, and it was a long time yet until the dinner hour.
Mark had finished his time-table, and was now reading. Every now and then he got up to stretch his legs, but he took no notice of Clancy, who was beginning to fidget. Her eyes wandered to the sheet of questions in front of her, and she surreptitiously pulled it a little nearer.
Mark’s clipped voice made her jump.
“You’ll find it easier if you pick up the paper,” he said.
The fight had long since gone out of her, but she still would not give in.
“I can’t read your writing,” she said childishly.
His eyebrows went up and he reached across for the paper.
“Let me read it to you,” he said.
She listened unwillingly, aware that she had given him the wrong opening by her evasion. He paused as he came to the history question, and read out quite expressionlessly: “Write what you know of Cromwell and Ireland,” and Clancy’s eyes flashed.
“Give it to me!” she snapped. “I’ll show you!”
She snatched the paper back, and dipped her pen fiercely in the ink.
Mark stretched, then looked at his watch.
“Six o’clock,” he remarked. “Well, you’ve wasted nearly five hours, Clancy, but I think you’ll just have time to finish before dinner. Take the other subjects first, please. I left the history till the last as I fancied you’d have plenty to say.”
She shot him a malevolent look, but she gave in. She began to write.
CHAPTER FIVE
IT was the beginning of partial submission for Clancy. As Mark had observed, she was not stupid, and that first encounter with him in the schoolroom had taught her that it was going to be quicker and less unpleasant in the long run to observe the letter of the law if not the spirit.
I
n those early days it was not difficult for Mark to think of her as a child for she showed him no other side to her nature. She was a difficult and often tiresome pupil and she resolutely refused to learn. In the privacy of the tower room, he had corrected hers and Brian’s general knowledge paper, and sighed impatiently over their mutual lack of schooling, and he wondered what on earth his string of predecessors could have done to earn their keep.
With Clancy it was a little harder to assess the extent of her ignorance, for she clearly had not tried until she reached the history question, and then she had let herself go for several pages. Mark grinned as he tackled the ill-written and misspelt exercise. Clancy’s style was flamboyant and bloodthirsty, her dates surprisingly correct, and her comments on the Lord Protector of England vitriolic and often inaccurate. She rounded off her exercise by saying smugly: “The curse of Cromwell lies heaviest upon the west of Ireland, and all who bear this blood-drenched name should take heed before they try to meddle with the Irish.”
The next morning he handed them back their corrected papers and informed them mildly that their ignorance was astounding. “Any boy of nine could have made a better showing on your paper, Brian,” he said, “and Clancy’s was first-term stuff at any public school. It strikes me that I shall have to revise my whole time-table, and start again at the beginning.”
They sat looking at him, Brian alert and a little apprehensive, Clancy slumped in her chair, an expression of bored indifference on her face.
“I often miss lessons,” Brian excused himself. “When I get colds and things Agnes sends me to bed.”
“Yes, well I hope you’re growing out of that now,” Mark replied briskly. “We’ll have to try to persuade Agnes that you don’t need so much coddling.”
Half-way through the morning, Agnes brought in the tray of milk and biscuits for Brian, but this time she set it down on the table and left the room without speaking.
At eleven o’clock, Mark left them for their twenty minutes’ break, and strolled up and down on the terrace, thinking over the lesson he had just concluded. He liked teaching, and even such unpromising material as he seemed to have here did not as yet discourage him. He found himself slipping back into those leisurely days of his youth when personal problems were mainly academic, and the little world of school so all-important. He stood for a moment looking across the loch, placid in the sunlight, at the brown hills and the wild landscape softened by the summer haze, and felt very remote from the country he had left such a short time ago.
He glanced at his watch and turned back into the house. As the next lesson proceeded he knew that he had the boy’s interest. Indeed, to Brian, used to a muddled and usually inadequate method of education, Mark’s clearly phrased sentences proved a distraction and he found himself eager to learn and still more eager to please. But Clancy showed no response, and merely shook her head when Mark paused to ask her if she understood. He let it go for the moment. It was enough to have gained the boy’s willing co-operation, and he did not anticipate much trouble from Brian in the future.
Clancy, who was beginning to fidget, sprang to her feet as the schoolroom door suddenly opened, and her glad cry of: “Conn!” made Mark break off in the middle of a sentence. He was momentarily startled by the change in her. Here for the first time was a young girl, pliant and eager, her mobile face fit with a charm that was quite unconscious, and he turned to look curiously at the young man who had entered the room.
“Hello!” Conn said, including them all in a vague salute. “I just looked in to tell you, Clancy, that Sunrise has foaled and it’s a filly.”
“A filly!” Clancy ran up to him. “Oh, Conn, that’s wonderful! When did it happen? Why wasn’t I there?”
“Yesterday afternoon. I thought you were coming over.” Clancy’s look of anguish was out of all proportion to the occasion.
“He kept me,” she cried, jerking her head in Mark’s direction. “He kept me in the whole afternoon when I should have been helping you with the mare. I’ll never forgive him.”
Conn gave her a careless pat.
“Don’t fuss yourself. We got on very well without you,” he said, and crossed over to Mark, holding out a hand. “You, I suppose, are this English monster I’ve been hearing so much about. I’m Conn Driscoll.”
The two men shook hands, and Conn said:
“Is the poor child in your bad books already, to be kept in on a fine summer’s afternoon?”
“It was Clancy’s own fault,” said Mark. “She cut her morning’s work, and it had to be done in her free time.
Conn scratched his red head.
“I see what you mean, Clancy, my dear,” he said with a grin. “It’s the English way, you know. Everything laid down for you—British discipline.”
Clancy grinned, scenting an ally.
“He’ll learn, won’t he, Conn?” she said gaily.
Mark sat down at the table again.
“No, Clancy, I think it’s you who will learn,” he said. “Sit down please, and get on with your work.”
She hung on to Conn’s arm.
“Oh, but it’s nearly lunch-time,” she said. “I must go and see the filly at once. What will you call her, Conn?”
“Well, now, I thought you’d find a name for her,” he said, preparing to sit on the edge of the table and discuss the matter.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Driscoll, but I must ask you to go,” Mark said quietly. “I can’t have my classes interrupted. Sit down Clancy, and we’ll go on with the lesson.”
Conn grimaced, ruffled Clancy’s hair and strolled to the door.
“The good old days are gone, my fine girl,” he said. “Sit down and do your lessons, and perhaps this afternoon your English gaoler will let you off the chain.”
“As long as she does her work this morning,” said Mark imperturbably.
“What do you think, Conn?” asked Brian gleefully, “we’re going to do Oliver Cromwell for history.”
“That,” said Conn, before he shut the door, “should prove to be a battle rather than a lesson.”
Clancy turned on Mark.
“If you try and come between me and Conn—” she cried, but he barely gave her a glance.
“My dear child, don’t be so silly,” he replied. “I’ve no desire to come between you and anybody, as you so dramatically put it. I’m simply here to teach you, and working hours are working hours, and that’s all there is to it. Now sit down and don’t hold up the lesson any longer.”
Mark became fond of the tower room. It was pleasant to be able to get right away from the rest of the house and know that he would not be disturbed. Here at the top of his own undisputed staircase he could shut himself away and forget them all: Kevin with his changeable moods; Aunt Bea, self-effacing and vague; Agnes with her resentful distrust; and Clancy, touchy, withdrawn, and always ready to flare out at him.
There were times when their indifference to world affairs irritated him profoundly.
Once Kevin said to him:
“You think us a very self-centred race, don’t you, Cromwell? You resent our immunity from world affairs—perhaps even despise us a little. And yet, you know, we fought for our independence, for our right to immunity.”
“Has anyone the right to immunity these days?” Mark answered gently, and Kevin smiled.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know. The great days of Ireland are past—the days Clancy would have return—and we’ve fallen into a decay perhaps—I don’t know. But isn’t it good to find peace in some little unimportant country—peace in Ireland where never peace was known?”
“Yes,” Mark said, “perhaps you’re right. I find it hard to adjust myself yet. You’re all so young, so uncaring. Take Clancy, for instance. So many of the girls I’ve known in England were only a year or so older, but they were mature compared to her, self-reliant intelligent young women with little time for tantrums.”
But the subject of Clancy held no interest for Kevin. “Ah, she’ll grow up on
e of these days,” he said carelessly. “Irish girls are different. They marry early unless they’re like my poor sister, and in either case their job is to look after a home and some man. Are your English girls any better for their freedom? Look at my niece, Clodagh, now. As pretty a little piece as you could wish to find, but twenty-two and not married yet. That’s what comes of gadding around and picking and choosing, as I tell my sister, Kate. I’ll not have that nonsense when it’s Clancy’s turn. Settle the women of your family, my dear Cromwell, and you’ll save yourself a deal of trouble.”
Mark smiled.
“The French used to have the same point of view,” he said. “Quite often it worked. Don’t you believe in love, then, Mr. O’Shane? Or do you hold that marriage can get on quite well without it?”
“You speak with reproof. Were you ever in love?”
There was a little silence, then Mark answered quietly: “Yes, I was in love, in my own meaning of the term.”
“And she let you down—threw you over for a man with more to offer. Love! Women!”
“No,” said Mark politely, “she was killed in a plane crash a few years ago.”
He liked Kevin despite his obvious failings. He drank too much, was a bad father, and had doubtless been a bad husband, but there was a charm and a certain honesty about him which compelled liking.
With Clancy Mark made little progress. He tried letting her alone, and he tried drawing her out, but neither method produced any marked result in her attitude towards him. She had learned to observe his few rules because it was clearly foolish to punish herself for the sake of a gesture, but she showed her dislike in countless other ways. She refused to be friendly with him during leisure hours avoiding his company whenever possible, and she contrived to make her studies with him into a stern test for patience.