by Sara Seale
New Year’s Day was fine, but there was a threatening look about the sky. Agnes said it would rain by the afternoon and if Brian was going out he was to be sure and take a mackintosh.
“Ah, fussing as usual!” Brian muttered. Under Mark’s quiet influence he had become much less concerned for his health, and he watched his sister pull an ancient coat over her slacks and old red jersey with a hopeful eye. “Where are you going?”
“To Slievaun. Conn wants me to go for the last time and say good-bye.”
“Take me, too,” he begged. “Mark’s gone out with a gun with Kilmallin and there’s nothing to do. Take me with you, Clancy.”
She looked at him doubtfully.
“You know you’re not supposed to come in the boat unless Mark’s with us. Agnes would make a fuss with Kilmallin.”
“She won’t know till we’re back. Ah, do take me, Clancy, the loch’s as still as glass and it won’t rain till tea-time.” She hesitated. It would be easier to have Brian with her on this last sad expedition and they could come back directly after lunch.
“All right, come, then,” she said recklessly. “I’ll get into trouble for taking you but I don’t care.”
No one saw them start, and it never occurred to either of them to leave a message that Brian would be out for lunch, too. Brian, excited and pleased at his own daring, bounced up and down, shouting. He was not good in a boat and several times called down Clancy’s wrath at his antics.
“What did you bring Brian for?” asked Conn, when they arrived.
“He wanted to come,” said Clancy. “Haven’t you enough lunch for him?”
“Ah, sure, you know there’s always plenty of food. Oh, well, Bridie can look after him for a while.”
Conn was full of talk, and discussed his future plans with an enthusiasm that left no regrets for his old life, but Clancy found she had nothing to say to him. The deserted stables looked derelict and haunted, and the house, with its bare rooms, already wore that air of decay which hangs over so many Irish farmsteads.
After lunch, she and Conn sat over the fire, talking in desultory fashion. Clancy wanted to go, but Brian had taken himself off somewhere, skeleton-hunting, and she was obliged to wait. Once or twice she glanced at the sky a little anxiously. Storm clouds were coming up fast, and if Brian got a soaking, there would be Agnes to reckon with. He came back as the first drops began to fall and she hurried him into his mackintosh.
They ran, scrambling and slipping, down the steep, narrow track to the shore, and a great gust of wind and rain greeted them as they reached the boat.
“Good-bye, Clancy,” Conn said, taking her by the shoulders. “It’s really good-bye, isn’t it, my little faithful friend? You’ve grown up and away from me now.”
“Good-bye, Conn,” she replied, “and here is the blessing you wanted, on you and Slievaun. Bless you and keep you safe from harm.”
She lifted her face and kissed him gravely on the mouth.
“Be quick, be quick!” cried Brian, already in the boat, “the loch’s getting rougher and rougher.”
It was not far across, but as they reached the middle the wind took the boat and set it tossing like a cockle-shell. Clancy strained at the oars, but she could make hardly any headway. The wind, was against them and the strength seemed to run out of her arms quicker than it had done a few weeks ago. Brian was leaping about on his seat with anxiety and he made a sudden plunge into the bows, nearly upsetting the boat.
“I’m frightened,” he shouted, above the wind. “Clancy, I’m frightened! Do something!”
“Keep still,” Clancy shouted back. “Find the scoop, and bail.”
But the scoop must have been in the second boat, or lost, for it could not be found. They were shipping a lot of water, and Brian feebly tried to bail with his cupped hands.
Clancy decided that the best thing to do would be to turn the boat and go with the wind back to the other shore. As she started to put about, Brian, in a frenzy of fear, leapt to his feet and pointed.
“There’s someone coming up the drive. Michael John! Michael John!”
At the same moment a squall caught them, and, with Brian’s sudden movement, the little boat capsized.
The icy coldness of the water was an exquisite pain as Clancy went under, then she was fighting for air, and striking out wildly for Brian, who could not swim. He nearly throttled her as she guided him to the boat, and she thought she would never manage to heave him up out of the water and across the upturned keel. She was too exhausted and too numb with cold to try to climb on to the boat herself, but clung to the side and told Brian to be very still.
“Someone will see us,” she gasped, “someone is sure to see us from the house. Don’t be frightened, Brian dear. You’re out of the water and I won’t let you sink.”
Michael John saw them. His immediate instinct was to take out the other boat without delay, but he was old, and his limbs too crippled with rheumatism to make speed against this wind.
He ran into the house shouting loudly for Mark:
“Mr. Cromwell, Mr. Cromwell! The children is drownin’! They have the boat sunk on them!”
But there had already been anxiety for Brian. No one knew where he was, and Agnes was at that moment in the library telling Kelvin and Mark the boy must be in a bog with a broken leg, so long had he been gone, and he without a bite inside him. Mark raced ahead of them and had the second boat out on the water before the others had reached the jetty.
Between them, he and Clancy got Brian into the bottom of the boat where he lay shivering and crying, and Mark, steadying the tossing little craft with difficulty, helped Clancy over the side.
“Take the second pair of oars,” he ordered curtly; “we’ll be quicker and it’ll warm you.”
Kevin, white and shaking, was waiting on the jetty, and he picked up his son in his arms and looked with terrible accusing eyes at Clancy.
“If you’ve brought harm to him, I’ll not stand you in my sight,” he said, and carried the boy into the house.
“You,” cried Agnes, “with your pride and your disobedience! Wouldn’t you be struck to the ground for very shame! If it’s not by drownin’ the boy will be taken, then it’s the pneumony we’ll be fightin’ this same night.”
“Go and see to your charge,” said Mark sharply. “Hot bath, blankets and bottles at once, and the same for you, Clancy. Don’t stand there with your teeth chattering. Run!” She ran in Agnes’s hurrying wake, and up to the schoolroom, overwrought and exhausted, her only idea to keep out of everybody’s way and get to a fire. Mark found her there, ten minutes later, crouched over the fire in her dripping clothes, her small frame shaken with shudders.
“Really, Clancy, have you no sense at all?” he exclaimed. “Get out of those wet things at once, or do you want me to undress you?”
“I’m so cold,” she said.
He took her by the shoulders and jerked her to her feet.
“Of course you’re cold, and you’ll get an almighty chill if you don’t get into a hot bath as quickly as you can. Come along, now. I’ll turn it on for you while you get undressed.”
“I didn’t mean to upset the boat,” she said rather piteously. “He wouldn’t keep still and I was getting tired. I shouldn’t have taken him, I know.”
“We’ll talk about that later,” said Mark. “Now, do as I tell you at once, and go to your room.”
The bath water was not hot, and, exasperated, he snatched up a couple of rough towels and looked vainly for one of the maids, but the whole household was busy carrying cans of boiling water backwards and forwards to Brian’s room, and he went along himself and knocked on Clancy’s door. She was standing in the middle of the room in her slip. There was no fire and the room was very cold.
“Take it off,” Mark said peremptorily.
She looked at him as if he had taken leave of his senses.
“This?” she said, fingering the solitary wet garment nervously.
“Of course. The
bath water’s cold, and I’m going to rub you down, there doesn’t seem anyone else to do it,” he said. “Oh, don’t mind me, I’m just your tutor, and I might as well do nursemaid as well. Hurry up, now.”
Without a word, she slipped off the thin silk and stood, naked and shivering, before him. He wrapped one towel round her waist, and with the other rubbed her down with a thoroughness that was scarcely gentle.
“You’re hurting,” she said once, but he only replied; “I have to be rough, I’m afraid,” and rubbed the harder.
She stood there wrapped in the towels and watched him while he flung open wardrobe and drawers, pulling out warm clothes and tossing them over to her.
“When you’re dressed, come back to the schoolroom fire. I’m going to make you a hot toddy,” he told her, walking to the door. “Don’t dawdle now, and you’d better keep out of your father’s way for a time.”
Dinner that evening was a strained and silent meal. Kevin sat at the head of the table with a stern face, the whisky decanter nearly empty at his elbow. Aunt Bea looked anxious, and Clancy sat, the most silent of them all, shivering, and nervously picking at her food.
“He slept for three hours, and Agnes says he’s made a good supper,” Aunt Bea ventured at last. “There’s no sign of a chill yet, and he seems quite cheerful.”
“No thanks to his sister,” said Kevin.
“Well, at least she got him out of the water as soon as she could,” Mark observed quietly. “And the boy’s had all the attention he could possibly need.”
Kevin shot him a look.
“The night will show,” was all he said. “I’ll be surprised if he isn’t running a temperature by the morning.”
But it was not Brian who ran a temperature. Clancy, after a feverish, restless night, when she could not get warm, however many blankets she piled on her bed, dragged herself out of an exhausted sleep too late for breakfast, and reported to Mark in the schoolroom with two brilliant spots of colour high on her cheekbones.
Mark took one look at her and placed a cool hand on her forehead.
“You’re feverish,” he said quickly. “Are you shivery?”
She nodded.
“I think I must be going to have a cold.”
He took her pulse, then went and fetched a thermometer.
“H’m, as I thought. A hundred and two,” he observed, when he had taken it. “You’d better go to bed, my child. I’ll tell Biddy to light a fire in your room.”
She went back to bed gladly. She ached all over and her chest hurt her, and she would be out of her father’s way for the rest of the day.
After lunch Mark went in to see her and took her temperature again. His eyebrows went up as he read the thermometer, but he made no comment, but shook it down and returned it to its case.
“Does it hurt you to breathe?” he asked, looking down at her flushed face on the pillows.
She moved her head restlessly.
“Yes. Sometimes I feel I can’t breathe at all. How is Brian?”
“Brian’s all right, not even a cold. Now lie quiet and try and sleep if you can. I’ll be back in a little while.”
He went down to the library and said abruptly to Kevin: “You’d better send for Doctor Boyle, Kilmallin.”
Kevin’s eyes were afraid.
“Brian?” he said.
“There’s nothing the matter with Brian,” Mark said. “Clancy’s temperature is now a hundred and four and I think she’s starting pneumonia.”
She was very ill. Doctor Boyle sent a nurse in that night, and, in the next few days, made repeated journeys to the house, looking grave and talking of lack of resistance and a troubled mind. Mark sat with her for many a long hour, for she seemed to rest when he was there. Sometimes she was quite lucid in what she said, but more often she rambled on in a painful dry little voice, odd disjointed sentences which sometimes made sense to him and sometimes did not, but she always knew him, and her fever-bright eyes watched his face anxiously as he sat beside the bed.
Once she said quite clearly.
“You’ll never leave us, Mark, will you?”
“Not as long as you need me,” he reassured her.
“I shall always need you,” she said. “I think I always did. Was it a ghost in the glass?”
“A ghost?” For a moment he was puzzled.
“The ghost of my future husband in the looking-glass.”
“No, my dear, it wasn’t a ghost.”
“It was you really, wasn’t it? Has Conn gone yet?”
“Not yet. He’s waiting till you’re better.”
“That’s nice of him. He’s a nice person really, isn’t he?”
“Very nice. Would you like to see him?”
She gave a little sigh.
“No, I don’t think so. He has my blessing. Mark, I never finished my essay for you.”
“You can finish it when you get up again. Don’t talk now. Try to go to sleep.”
Another time she seemed worried about some shells.
“I can’t find them,” she said. “Where are they, Mark?”
“What shells, darling?”
“I don’t know. Some shells Conn was going to show me, only he never did. He took Clodagh instead.”
He remembered now.
“They’re in the pools at Kinross Sands,” he said gently. “We’ll find them next summer.”
She sighed.
“Oh yes. We found them before, didn’t we? You came with me. You always came with me when Conn wouldn’t. Did you like my birthday frock?”
“It was lovely. You must get well quickly and wear it again.”
“Am I ill, then?”
“Yes, you’re very ill, but you’re going to get better.”
“How funny. Does Kilmallin know?”
‘Yes, he’s very anxious. He’s been to see you several times. Don’t you remember?”
“No.”
Her father’s visits had seemed to upset her and he had stopped coming.
“Is he still angry with me?” she asked.
“No, he’s not angry with you. He just wants you to get well.”
Often she got confused with time.
“Is Conn married yet?” she would ask.
“Not yet. Not till the spring. You will be well then, and able to go to the wedding.”
“Mark, did you ever get married?”
“No.”
“What a pity. You would have been a nice husband, in spite of being the Lord Protector of England. Were you angry when you lost two thousand men at Clonmel in 1650?”
“That was the other Cromwell, my dear. Don’t talk any more now.”
The rest of the household was subdued and unsettled. Kevin, looking ill and somehow bewildered, was drinking more heavily and seemed unable to realize that his daughter might die.
“Och, she’s the tough one!” he would say over and over again. “Clancy never comes to any harm. Boyle is an old woman! What’s pneumonia these days with all these fancy drugs they push into you?”
Mark sometimes felt that only he and Doctor Boyle were really aware of the danger of those critical days.
“They’ve feared for the boy for so long that they can’t or won’t understand,” the doctor said irritably. “It’s the old story of the creaking door. Brian’s been wrapped in cottonwool all his life and his constitution is far stronger than the girl’s as a result. I’m anxious, Cromwell. I don’t mind telling you, I’m anxious.
There came a night of wind and rain, when Mark was summoned from the tower room by a frightened Biddy.
“The nurse sent me to alarm you, sor. Will you come at once, please?”
Mark flung a warm dressing-gown hastily over his pyjamas and followed her through the door at the top of the stairs into the main part of the house and along the bitter cold passages, thinking how appropriate the Irish turn of phrase often was. No one in the house seemed to be stirring, and the nurse met him at the door of Clancy’s room and whispered:
&nb
sp; “She’s very excited, and I thought maybe you might get her quieted. Doctor Boyle thinks this is the critical period, and if we can’t keep her quiet her heart won’t stand it.”
“Is she worrying about something?” Mark asked, fear touching him at the woman’s grave face.
“Her father came in to see her on his way to bed. He didn’t say much to upset her, but he had the drink taken, and it’s since then she wouldn’t quieten. I’ve sent for Doctor Boyle.”
A shaded lamp burned in the room and the fire had just been replenished with a pile of turfs which as yet glowed dully. Clancy was half sitting up in the bed, her eyes, brilliant and enormous, fixed on the door.
“Mark ...” she said, “oh, Mark, you’ve come. Is it morning? Will I be late for class? Listen to the wind!”
He laid her back on the pillows and covered her up. “It’s only midnight,” he said, “and you’ve got to go to sleep, then you’ll be up in time for class.”
She sighed and relaxed.
“I forget,” she said in a tired little voice. “I’m ill, aren’t I? I won’t be getting up yet.”
“Not just yet. Try to sleep and I’ll stay with you.”
“Kilmallin doesn’t want me to get well,” she said fretfully.
“What nonsense! Of course he wants you to get well. What makes you think he doesn’t?”
Her voice became quick and excited again.
“He doesn’t want me,” she said. “Conn doesn’t want me, either. No one does.”
He stroked the black hair back from her forehead.
“I want you, Clancy,” he said steadily.
She turned her head to look at him.
“Do you?” she said. “Do you really, Mark?”
“Listen, Clancy,” he said, “I want you so much that if you don’t get well I shan’t stay here for Brian. I shall go back to England because I couldn’t bear this place without you.”
All at once she was quiet and the high colour seemed to fade.
“Do you really feel like that?” she asked. “In spite of everything?”
“In spite of everything, so now it’s up to you, and I don’t think you’ll let me down, Clancy.”