by Sara Seale
“Not entirely, but you’re worn out, we won’t talk about it now—and here’s your aunt with the tea.”
They put out the lamps, still burning palely in the daylight and gathered round the fire to drink their tea. In the morning light their faces looked tired and drawn, and it was difficult to remember that Kevin lay dead upstairs.
“There will be so much to see to,” Aunt Bea said a little helplessly. “It’s difficult to adjust oneself, isn’t it?”
“Don’t worry, Miss Bea,” Mark said gently, “I’ll take all I can off your shoulders.”
She sighed.
“Yes, you’ll do that, won’t you, Mark? We’ve always depended on you.”
Clancy looked at him in silence. Yes, she thought, Mark would see to everything, just as he always had, and in a little while he would be gone, he and Kilmallin both gone and no one left to order their lives. The slow tears welled up and fell, not grief for Kilmallin who had never loved her, but for that other compassion and understanding which would never come again.
CHAPTER FOUR TEEN
CLODAGH came for the funeral, with Conn and her parents, and in the evening they all sat on the terrace, unfamiliar and ill at ease in their black clothes, listening to Aunt Kate discuss the future with her sister. Kevin, they found, had altered his will after his first heart attack and left three hundred a year in trust for Clancy instead of the original hundred and fifty she was to have had. Other bequests remained the same except that Mark received five hundred pounds for his services, which Aunt Kate openly considered to be both generous and unnecessary. She was ruffled because her husband and her sister had been appointed joint guardians to the children and expressed her willingness to arrange their lives for them in no uncertain measures.
“Nothing will change, Kate,” Aunt Bea said mildly. “You will, of course, be welcome here if you wish to come and stay, and the children may certainly visit you, but we shall carry on here at Kilmallin just as we have always done. Brian will be going to school in the autumn, and Clancy and I will just live here quietly and look after the place for Brian until he is old enough to take over his inheritance himself.”
“Nonsense! Now why don’t you—” she turned to Mark, “—give up this ridiculous notion of going back to England, and take on the running of Kilmallin? The trustees would pay you well for it.”
Mark looked surprised.
“I’ve no qualifications for such a job, Mrs. Desmond,” he replied, reflecting that had such an offer come earlier he might have been tempted to accept it.
“Nonsense!” said Aunt Kate again.
She began to enlarge on her idea, ignoring her quiet little husband and extracting a pleased but bewildered agreement from her sister. Mark was aware that Clancy was looking at him hungrily, silently begging him to stay, but she did not add to her aunt’s persuasions, and when Mark said he was sorry but such a consideration was impossible, she got up quietly and went into the house.
It was with relief that they all watched the departure of the Desmonds for Dublin the next day. Aunt Kate had proved a difficult and exacting guest and Mark could understand why she and her brother had never got on. Conn and Clodagh were to stay for a few days longer, and Mark suggested that they should take a picnic to Kinross Sands and leave Aunt Bea to answer her letters of condolence in peace.
It was strange, he thought, watching their preparations, strange and a little sad that no one really mourned for Kevin. Only to his daughter had he ever meant very much, and even she now accepted his lack of need for her and her grief was for the father she had never had rather than for Kevin himself.
They discussed him freely, lying on the sands after their bathe, his habits and his weaknesses, and the changes his death might bring to them. Only Clancy, sitting a little apart from them, her back against a rock, took little part in the conversation, and when Clodagh said: “Now, Clancy, you’ll be able to have a horse—you can even buy it yourself out of your income,” she replied sedately: “I don’t think I any longer want a horse.”
“What will you do with your money?” Clodagh rolled over on her side to look at her cousin.
“Nothing. There’s nothing to spend it on here.”
“But you don’t have to stop here. You could travel and have fun.”
“Kilmallin told Aunt Bea he was leaving Clancy money so that she wouldn’t be a burden to her husband,” Brian said, scooping a hole in the sand and filling it with shells.
“What husband?” demanded Clodagh. “Had Kilmallin fixed one up? What a scream! Can you see Clancy with a husband, Conn?”
Conn looked at Clancy leaning against the rock, the wind blowing her black hair gently back from her forehead.
“Yes,” he said with faint surprise, “I think I can. You’ve changed, Clancy.”
“Have I? In what way?”
“I don’t know. I think you’ve grown up. She has changed, hasn’t she, Mark?”
“Not really,” said Mark with a smile. “But now you’ve been away from her, you see her, perhaps, with different eyes.”
“Well,” said Clodagh, observing with interest the way in which Mark was looking at her cousin, “clothes certainly make a difference to anyone, and that new bathing suit is a decided improvement on last year’s awful old striped thing. You’ve got a very nice figure now, Clancy, hasn’t she, Mark?”
Clancy went a little pink.
“Oh, shut up!” she exclaimed, and stretched herself out on the sand, shaking the hair over her face.
Mark observed them all with lazy interest. Conn and Clodagh, although they had been married three months, were still like a couple of children, bickering find making outrageous statements. At twenty-three, he reflected, they were far less adult than Clancy, and had little of her sensibility.
“Why don’t you adopt my mamma’s proposal and stop on at Kilmallin?” asked Clodagh curiously. “You used to say you wanted a change of job when you first came here.”
“I also said at a later time that I wasn’t sure if one ought to deny one’s calling,” he retorted.
“Oh, that’s all nonsense,” she said, sounding very like her mother. “Conn changed his job and he doesn’t regret it, do you, darling?”
“Not yet,” said Conn with a grin, and she threw a piece of seaweed at him.
“Do you really feel teaching is your calling, then?”
“I think so. It’s the thing I do best.”
“Staying here would be much easier.”
“Yes, it probably would, but at the risk of sounding pompous, I must remind you that the easiest way is not always the right one.”
She made a face.
“Oh dear! You do sound schoolmasterish! Have you asked him to stay, Clancy?”
“No.” Clancy’s voice was muffled under her hair.
“Why not? I thought you liked him now.”
Clancy rolled over on to her back and stared up at the sky.
“If Mark wanted to stay he would,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to persuade anyone to go against their conscience.”
Clodagh gave a little squeal.
“What on earth’s the matter with you both? You talk like books,” she exclaimed. “Well, I’m going to bathe again.”
“Do you think you should?” asked Conn.
“Of course I should—don’t start fussing at this early stage.” She jumped up, pushing the sand from her legs, then added conversationally: “I’m going to have a baby in January, so Conn’s a bit silly at times. Mother doesn’t know yet. She’ll be an awful grandmother.”
Clancy sprang to her feet and hurled herself upon her cousin.
“Oh, Clodagh, no!” she cried, embracing her warmly. “How exciting! I’ll be an aunt — or is it only another cousin? Oh, darling, I’m so pleased for you, and for Conn.” Their arms entwined, they wandered off towards the sea, laughing and chattering with mutual delight.
When they were all ready to start home again, Conn suggested that they stop at Slievaun and call upon th
e new owners.
“I’d like to see what they’ve made of the old place,” he said.
“Oh no,” said Clancy quickly, then gave a little sigh. “All right, if you like.”
They went trooping off to the car, and Mark, left for a moment with Clancy, said:
“I can drop you at the crossroads if you’d rather.”
“No,” she replied, “I don’t suppose it matters now. Mark—I haven’t asked you, but I—I suppose you wouldn’t consider staying on as bailiff?”
He picked up the lunch-basket and a couple of rugs. “You haven’t asked me,” he said gravely, “because you alone understand such things as integrity.”
“By that you mean ‘to thine own self be true’ like Othello, or was it Hamlet?”
“Neither—Polonius. Yes, that’s what I mean. But thank you for wanting me, Clancy.”
“I shall always want you,” she said with a small sigh, and he replied slowly and with an odd little smile:
“Yes, I really believe you will.”
The others were calling from the car, and he slipped a hand round her waist and took her to join them.
It was not a successful visit. The new owners, taken by surprise and rather shocked by a social call so soon after a bereavement in the family, were uncomfortable and prone to talk in hushed voices. Bridie, with her old ideas of hospitality, immediately brought in refreshments and they sat in the living room, now converted into something which resembled an arts and crafts shop, drinking inferior sherry and trying not to catch each others’ eyes.
They left as soon as they decently could and when they were barely out of earshot, collapsed into hysterical laughter.
“Did you see the cushion covers—tassels on everything!”
“And the wallpaper!”
“And all those green china animals!”
“They were very shocked,” said Clancy, “—all going for a picnic only a few days after the funeral and Clodagh in that backless green play-suit!”
“Whoever would have thought Slievaun could have been turned into something quite so dreadful?” marvelled Clodagh.
“And who would have thought Bridie would have stayed? They’d even dolled her up in a frilly apron,” said Conn.
“Poor Bridie,” Clancy said. “Perhaps she would come to us. Did you hear the woman say they thought of turning the stables into a tea-house next summer and doing shilling teas for the village?”
Mark drove in silence, listening to their comments. They were all a little overstrung after the strain of the past few days and their laughter grew noisier and noisier as they invented stories about Slievaun’s new owners, and put imaginary speeches into their mouths.
Aunt Bea glanced at their flushed faces a little disapprovingly when they got in, but she said nothing, only after dinner when Conn, Clodagh and Clancy had gone up to the schoolroom to play rummy, she observed to Mark that young things were very resilient.
“It’s only reaction, really,” Mark told her gently. “They don’t mean to be unfeeling.” He told her about the visit to Slievaun, but Aunt Bea had called herself and saw nothing hilariously funny about her new neighbours.
“Not the sort of people one would want to be on close terms with, perhaps,” she said, “but very harmless and inoffensive. I hope the children weren’t rude.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Mark said, “and you must remember, Miss Bea, they were all in that state of mind when it’s a relief to find something funny in anything.”
“Yes, perhaps. They are certainly very noisy. I remember when my dear father died we children were not allowed to raise our voices or even play games, out of respect for the dead.”
“Well, I don’t really think that attitude does much good. It’s very much better to be natural, and I don’t think your brother would have minded.”
“No, I don’t suppose he would.” She looked at him and her face was suddenly as shamed and embarrassed as a child’s. “Will it sound dreadful to you, Mark, if I say that though I loved my brother dearly, in a sense his death is a release for me? He and Kate, you see—between them I had no life of my own, and now, now I’m free to make my own decisions.”
‘Yes, I can quite understand that.” He spoke with great gentleness wondering if, after a life which had been so long repressed, she would be capable of making a decision at all.
“You should try to get away sometimes,” he said. “With Brian at school, you and Clancy could visit and go about. It would be good for you both.”
“Perhaps I will,” she said, and looked at him oddly. “We might come to England for a little.”
“That would be delightful,” he said, his face impassive.
“Kate spoke to me about Clancy before she left.”
“Yes?”
“She seemed to have an idea that—well, she seemed to think you might be fond of Clancy.”
He was silent for a moment, then he said:
“How would you feel about it if I said your sister was right?”
“I?” She looked surprised. “Why, of course I should be delighted if—that is, if Clancy—”
“Returned the compliment?”
Aunt Bea put a thin, tentative hand on his sleeve.
“Dear Mark,” she said, “I have no right or wish to question you. I only want you to know that whatever you think is right regarding Clancy will satisfy me entirely.”
“Thank you, Miss Bea,” he said, “I’m very touched by your confidence in me.”
“There was a man who was once fond of me,” she said, “but he never spoke because he thought I was too young, and I—well, of course, I just thought he did not care enough. I wouldn’t—” her smile was apologetic, “—I would not like the same thing to happen to Clancy.”
Mark’s answering smile was tender and reassuring.
“It won’t,” he said gently, “it won’t, Miss Bea.” Upstairs in the schoolroom the three of them were very quiet. After the former high spirits of the afternoon, reaction had set in, and a deep melancholy had settled upon them.
“What a lot’s happened in the past year,” Clodagh said, idly shuffling the cards. They had abandoned their game of rummy and sat there in the twilight with the lamp still unlighted. “Mark coming, Conn and me getting married, and now Kilmallin. And who would have thought, a year ago, that Brian would be fit for school and a normal life?”
“That was Mark’s doing,” Conn said. “Agnes had her own way with those governesses for years. Do you remember, Clancy, what a fury you were in when you came over to Slievaun that day to tell me about the new English tutor?”
“Yes.” Clancy, from her favourite perch on the window-seat, stared out of the window and did not turn her head. “I remember you said he would be old— some little dried-up old professor who can hardly keep body and soul together, you said, and not worth my powder and shot, you said.”
He laughed.
“Instead of which you got Mr. Mark Cromwell, not old at all, and more than a match for your powder and shot as things turned out.
Clodagh peered across at her through the shadows, but it was too dark now to see each other’s faces, and she got up and sat down on the window-seat, flinging an arm round Clancy’s shoulders.
“You’re fond of him, aren’t you?” she asked softly.
“Fond?” Clancy considered the word and found it meaningless. “I’ll light the lamp,” she said.
Clodagh gave a little shiver and went and sat on her husband’s knee.
“I’m feeling depressed,” she said, and snuggled her bright head into his shoulder.
He gave her a small kiss in the darkness.
“They say it’s all part of the business,” he told her soothingly. “You’re tired, allanah, you’ll feel better tomorrow...”
Clancy lighted the lamp and turned it slowly up. She looked at them for a moment, seeing them with fresh eyes; Clodagh content in the protection which was her right, and Conn with that strange new tenderness in his face as he bent his
red head to hers. They blinked in the light and Clancy watched them, feeling lonely and shut out.
“I think I’ll go to bed,” she said. “Put the lamp out when you’re ready.”
Safe in her own room, she stood looking at the glass snowstorm and Mark’s trinket-box lying together on the bedside table, her two most treasured possessions. She took the globe and shook it slowly, while, with her other hand, she raised the lid of the box. The plaintive, brittle little time tinkled its way to the end and she flung herself across the bed and wept bitterly.
Conn and Clodagh went home the next day, laden with honey and butter and eggs from the home farm.
“You must feed up, dear,” Aunt Bea told her, “I believe that’s very important at this stage. And Clodagh, when you tell your mother, I shouldn’t mention that we—that I knew first.”
“Dear Aunt Bea!” Clodagh gave her aunt a hug. “How clever you are. I’ll let Mother write the news to you herself. Good-bye. Good-bye, Clancy, come and see us soon. It’s a pity you don’t sew or knit, new aunts are expected to contribute lots of things. But you can buy me the small garments of fiction out of your new inheritance.”
“I will,” said Clancy, laughing. “I’ll buy you the finest layette Dublin can produce.”
“Oh, mother’s sure to see to that,” grimed Clodagh. “You’d much better buy me something decorative for my lying-in.”
“How absurd you are! I can’t imagine you a parent at all! Good-bye, darling—Conn, take care of her.”
Mark took them to the station, but Clancy did not accompany them. She begged a packet of sandwiches from Mary Kate in the kitchen and set off to spend a long day on her own. She had a great desire to visit Grania’s Cave and sit in the heather and listen to the larks and be alone in the hills and the sweeping waste of moorland. Her bout of crying the night before had left her void and emptied of emotion, and a lassitude held her so that she walked slowly, and was glad to reach the mouth of the cave and stretch her limbs in the sun.
There was a little stream which trickled from somewhere in the hills and wound past the mouth of the cave. She knelt beside it in the heather and cupped her hands to drink, then she splashed the cool, clear water over her face, and remained there, kneeling, and letting the stream run over her hands and wrists.