Jean Grainger Box Set: So Much Owed, Shadow of a Century, Under Heaven's Shining Stars

by Jean Grainger

  Still, he was shocked to think Edith believed him capable of conducting an affair.

  Apart from the fact he was married, he was sure Solange was involved in some small way with someone else. About a year ago, she had started asking for two days off together once a month, and staying away overnight. Of course, he had agreed. Mrs Canty and he were well able to manage on their own. She had never said where she went, nor did he ask. It wasn’t something he liked to think about, but Solange was a free agent. At first, he had feared that whoever she had met might whisk her away from them all; the thought filled him with dread. Though he might not admit it even to himself, the idea of Dunderrig without Solange was unthinkable. Yet time had passed and no mention was made of her leaving. He asked no questions and hoped she would stay. He knew Jeremy had been the love of her life and trusted this unknown man was only a form of consolation, a way of Solange reminding herself she was still a woman.

  The children once asked him where she went, and he had truthfully told them that he didn’t know, but that Solange was entitled to her own life and her own friends. She gave his family the lion’s share of her life as it was; she was allowed her privacy.

  He did try, for the twins’ sake mainly, to keep the lines of communication open with his wife, and he went to her in her sitting room most evenings. Yet he found these visits something to be endured rather than enjoyed.

  Last night’s conversation had ended when Edith demanded once again that he speak to Solange, complaining that the French woman clearly didn’t understand the type of upbringing that was appropriate for the heirs of Dunderrig. It was almost as if she wanted to set Richard and Solange at loggerheads. She could easily have complained to Solange herself but chose instead to have him do it. By agreeing with her and giving in on trivial matters, Richard managed to maintain the equilibrium. And so he had gently asked Solange to make sure the children were dressed in all their finery for their birthday party.

  As he parked the car and ran up the steps into the hallway, he discovered an atmosphere of gloom in the house not at all suited to a children’s birthday party. Mrs Canty was in the hall and jerked her head disapprovingly in the direction of the hardly-ever-used dining room, where the moss-green carpet and ivory-flock wallpaper had remained unchanged as long as he could remember – there had never seemed much point in redecoration as it was used only once or twice a year. Edith took all of her meals in her private sitting room, and Solange and Mrs Canty always ate in the kitchen with the children. Richard either ate in the kitchen or if he had missed the children’s dinner, in his study.

  Now, trying to look enthusiastic, he walked into the formal, forbidding room.

  James and Juliet were perched on either side of the long mahogany table. They were dressed in all the finery Edith had insisted on buying, and his wife looked like she had stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine. Her hair and makeup were immaculate, and she was wearing a dress he’d not seen before. Of Solange, there was no sign. The place at the head of the table had been laid for him.

  There were dainty little sandwiches and a cake laid out. The fine bone china his mother had collected but never used had been pressed into commission. As Richard took his seat, he noticed how clean and yet how miserable his children looked. Quite unlike when they ran to him across the cobbled courtyard each evening when he returned from the surgery, with their wild hair and smudged hands and faces. Normally, they were full of chat about that day’s activities, and he could barely keep up with the seemingly endless cast of dogs and pups and ponies and tadpoles and ducks that seemed to populate his children’s busy lives. This sedate and stilted scene was in no way in keeping with their exuberant personalities.

  ‘Greet your father, children,’ Edith instructed.

  ‘Hello Daddy… Father,’ they chorused quietly.

  ‘Well, hello James and Juliet.’ He wondered why he had gone from being Daddy to Father all of a sudden. Trying not to fall into this trap of forced decorum, he attempted to be more lively than his usual self. ‘My goodness, don’t you two look just smashing! What beautiful outfits!’

  ‘Mammy… I mean Mother bought them for us,’ James said, ever the peacemaker.

  Richard raised his eyebrows at Edith.

  ‘I just think it will be better from now on if they called us mother and father. It’s what all the other children will call their parents when they go to school next September, and we don’t want them seen as country bumpkins,’ Edith explained as she poured tea.

  ‘But Tommy O’Driscoll calls his mammy, Mammy, and so do the Murphys – they say mammy and daddy, too.’ Juliet was very put out.

  ‘That will do, Juliet. Please do not be impertinent. It is entirely irrelevant how the village children address their parents as you will not be mixing with them. You will not be going to the village school. You will be going to a convent boarding school in Dublin, and James will be going to the Jesuits in Kildare. At good schools, people don’t use those terms for their parents. They call them mother and father.’

  The twins turned their stricken faces towards their father. What was their mother talking about? Dublin and Kildare? Where were they? All summer they’d been talking about the fun they would have at ‘big school’. Surely Daddy wasn’t in on this plan.

  Richard had never discussed the children’s education with his wife; he discussed very little with her. He had assumed they would attend the local national school as he had done himself. He’d had to board when he went to secondary school but by then, he had been thirteen. The idea that his children would be sent away to school at their age was news to him and seemed ridiculous. Yet he knew that this would have to be handled delicately as once Edith had made up her mind she was impossible to sway.

  ‘Well, we can talk about this later. How about a nice slice of this lovely cake? I think Mrs Canty spent a long time making it so it will be just perfect for the big birthday of James and Juliet Buckley.’ Richard did his best to inject some cheer into his voice and into the sad little faces in front of him but knew he was failing miserably. He also knew they would have loved to have jam sandwiches and cake and lemonade with some of the village children in the kitchen surrounded by the Cantys and Solange and himself. This cold, musty-smelling room and those ridiculous-looking frilly outfits made his children look tiny and sad.

  Chapter 7

  ‘Daddy, I’m not going away to a school in Dublin, am I? And James doesn’t like sleeping anywhere except Dunderrig. He wouldn’t like to go away, either. We have to stay here with you and Solange and Mrs Canty and Eddie…’ Richard looked down at his little daughter, so small in her big bed.

  Her face was so innocent and trusting, and all he wanted to do was to reassure her that her mother had not meant what she said about boarding school. Yet he knew he could not issue promises that he was not guaranteed to keep. Edith seemed set on sending the twins away to school, and he was reluctant to go against her.

  Solange was standing at the door, and she caught Richard’s eye. She’d obviously had a similar conversation with James as she tucked him in.

  Juliet searched Solange’s face for the reassurance she craved. ‘Solange, tell him, we can’t leave Dunderrig, we would cry every day and every night, and we would be sad all the time…’ Her voice was growing in strength. ‘It’s not fair, it’s just mean old Mammy making us go away. She wants…’

  Solange approached the bed, hiding her frustration at Richard’s inability to stand up to Edith. The notion of these two babies being sent away from home horrified her, but she tried to settle the little girl who loved and trusted her so much.

  ‘Ma petite, écoute, listen now. You must sleep, tomorrow we will talk about this, and we will solve it all, but maintenant tu dois dormir, d’accord?’ She rubbed Juliet’s hair gently and felt the child relax.

  ‘You won’t let her send us away, Solange, sure you won’t?’ the little girl mumbled as she drifted off to sleep.

  Solange tried as
much as was possible to stay out of any decisions about the children. In the beginning, she had found it very puzzling. She’d had no intention of replacing their mother; she was content to be their nanny. Yet as time wore on, and Edith remained significantly absent from her children’s lives, Solange had found herself doing more and more for the twins. She knew they saw her as their mother, but while she loved them with every fibre of her being, she still tried to remind them, and herself, that Edith was their real mother.

  Richard did love them undoubtedly, but he seemed reluctant to challenge his wife. When she insisted they be dressed like fashion models, he ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ over them. When she banned local children from playing in the garden, he upheld her ruling. Yet as far as Solange could tell, they had no relationship at all. They spent as little time together as possible and when they did speak, Edith took the opportunity to insist Richard deal with some annoyance or source of irritation to her. He acquiesced in all things, as far as Solange could see, without argument or debate but without any affection either. He got no pleasure in making her happy if indeed Edith was capable of such an emotion. Sometimes, when the children did something that should have garnered their mother’s attention, like when they found a baby bird and nursed it back to health, Solange could have shaken Edith for her lack of enthusiasm. Edith looked at the little bird with a barely concealed shudder and said she hoped they had washed their hands as who knew what kind of germs a thing like that was carrying.

  SOLANGE BUSIED HERSELF IN the kitchen making coffee, listening to Richard’s footsteps crossing the landing above, then coming down the stairs. As he entered the kitchen, she thought he looked old and weary.

  ‘Coffee?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ Richard replied with a deep sigh. The clock ticked loudly in the hall. The normally easy silence between them was now taut with tension. Eventually, Richard spoke.

  ‘I know you probably think sending the twins away to school is a bad idea,’ he began, ‘and I agree to a certain extent. But perhaps Edith is right. Maybe it’s for the best. They do run a bit wild here.’

  Solange had remained silent regarding decisions about the twins for five years. She went quietly about her business and unobtrusively gave the children everything they needed, but she felt the anger rise up inside her now. Jeremy had often said that the Galliard temper was hard to rile but once it had been unleashed, woe betide whoever felt its terrifying force.

  She breathed deeply. She had never confronted Richard on anything before. They got along well and were friends, but they were both conscious of how too much closeness might appear to the ever-watchful eyes in Dunderrig, and so they had avoided it. He had mentioned their past lives from time to time but only in the context of reminiscences about Jeremy; he made an occasional kind enquiry after her health, but apart from that, their chats were light-hearted. Despite how she felt about James and Juliet, she knew they were not her children and that she had no say in how Richard and Edith raised them, but the thought of them being separated from her, and from each other, was breaking her heart. This time, she couldn’t remain silent.

  ‘Richard.’ She tried to keep her tone measured despite her frustration and feeling of helplessness. ‘I must say, I cannot see what reason you would have to make them leave their home. They are only five years old and Dunderrig is all they know. They are happy here. Please reconsider. They do not have a warm relationship with their mother; she does not seem to show any interest in them at all. They wait all day for you to come home to read to them or to tell you of their little adventures. Mrs Canty and I do our best with them, and no, they do not run wild – they are full of mischief and fun like all little children should be. We saw enough misery in France, you and I, when babies were torn from their families by war. Your children live in a time of peace, thank God. You have the chance to be their father, to love them and hold them and be proud of them, and if you let them go to some fancy school, who will do that? Tell me Richard, who will kiss them and cuddle them when they have bad dreams? Who will bandage their cut knees? A teacher? A nun?’

  Solange was shaking. Her hands were white with rage as she gripped the tea cloth she was holding. Richard looked shocked. He usually exuded such logical serenity that even the most hysterical of patients became calm and reasonable in Dr Buckley’s presence. Solange doubted anyone had ever spoken to him in the way she had spoken to him just now. It was his composed attitude in the face of inflicting such misery on his children that had infuriated her. She wanted to shake him, kick him, slap him – make him respond with something other than this sangfroid.

  Though she knew she shouldn’t, Solange continued, ‘She is their mother, I’m not denying that, but she does not know what is best for them. She does not know them, their little ways, the funny things they say. She simply tells them what to wear and how to sit correctly at the table. She doesn’t know that Juliet only has to hear a tune once before she can play it on the piano and that she sings beautifully, or that James can paint landscapes and portraits better than most adults. They would die of loneliness in a place like that! Without you, the Cantys, Dunderrig, and everything they love around them. They are only babies, Richard! Surely you can see that. It would break their spirit to send them away, and they have done nothing to deserve that. You and I, we saw such terrible waste – young lives cut down for no reason, other young men so broken they will never be the same again. And now, you think that to send your children away to be raised by an institution is a good idea? You know this is wrong, you must not allow this. You must say no. Please, Richard, please…’ Her voice tapered off, and she knew if she allowed herself to continue speaking, she would break down; so she stopped.

  The clock ticked loudly on the wall. Richard fixed his gaze on Solange. He sighed deeply as the seconds ticked by; the silence between them was deafening.

  ‘You are right, of course. I will speak to her. I just… I’m trying to keep everything going, Solange. You see it with your own eyes. We don’t have a marriage, Edith and I, we just both live here. I thought when I came back that things would improve, but you can see how things are. I tried, I really did. We did love each other once you know, but she never forgave me for wearing a British uniform, and I don’t think that she ever will. We can’t send them away, this is their home, where they belong with me and you and the Cantys. She will just have to accept it.’

  He straightened his shoulders and left the kitchen, leaving Solange wiping away tears of relief.

  Chapter 8

  ‘Are they up?’ Richard asked as he entered the sunny kitchen on the first Monday of September.

  ‘Up?’ Mrs Canty exclaimed. ‘They’ve been up since dawn, so excited they are to be going to school at last. Though what the Master will make of that pair of scallywags, I don’t know! They have the lunch packed and the two satchels out by the door, and they’ve gone out with Solange to feed the hens. The poor birds shouldn’t be fed till mid-morning, but if she didn’t find them something to do, they’d wake the parish with the yakking out of them. Honest to God, you’d swear ’twas to the circus they were going and not to school.’ She paused for a moment, then said, ‘I hope they’ll be all right, Dr Richard.’ The normally assured Mrs Canty had a hint of worry in her voice.

  ‘Of course they will, Mrs Canty. Sure, Master Cotter and his wife are lovely, kind people, who’ll look after them fine for us. ’Twill be a quiet house now with them gone all day though, won’t it?’

  Mrs Canty wiped her eyes.

  ‘Sure, ’tis only till two in the afternoon, I know, but we’re so used to them in and out all day long, driving me cracked, that we’ll miss them something desperate, myself and Solange. I’ll tell you one thing for nothing, Doctor Richard, and it’s this. ’Twas a lucky day you brought Solange Allingham to this house. She’s been a mother to those twins, and she loves them as if they were her own. And they love her, too. I don’t know what we’d have done only for her and that’s the truth.’

>   Richard knew Mrs Canty had no time whatsoever for Edith, and even if Edith had made any effort to be a mother, Mrs Canty would have criticised her. Yet he couldn’t help but agree with her.

  ‘I know. She’s been a godsend. I just wish it was happier circumstances that brought her to us. I sometimes think that she should marry again. She is still such a young woman, and I hate to think she is trapped here.’

  It had been troubling him for a while that maybe Solange was keeping her secret lover at arm’s length because she felt she could not leave Dunderrig and the children. Not that he wanted her to leave – selfishly, he had already offered her the position of medical secretary, just in case she got it into her head that she was no longer needed once the children had gone to school.

  Mrs Canty had obviously not grasped the obvious reason for Solange’s monthly overnight absences.

  ‘Well, I’d say she hasn’t much interest in that kind of thing. ’Tisn’t like she doesn’t catch their eye, anyway. Sure half the parish is in and out here offering to help her do this or that, but she gives them no quarter. Ted Collins is mad for her, but sure he’s way too old, and I told him so the last night he called. Sniffing around a lovely young woman like Solange and he in his dotage. “’Tis down on your knees praying for a happy death you should be, boyo!” says I to him. He didn’t like it a bit.’ Mrs Canty chuckled. ‘But sure, all the Collinses have notions of themselves. Always did. No, James and Juliet are all she cares about. I know ’tis a long time since poor Jeremy died, but she’s not ready yet. Maybe she never will be. Love like that, Dr Richard, you can’t just wipe it away and start again.’ The implication was clear – in her opinion, poor Dr Richard had never known such love.