“Any travel involved for research would be by boat or plane to England, but we can organise that to ensure there’s no huge walking involved.”
“The work sounds very interesting,” Angela said, moving the subject away from her leg. She was glad he had brought it up, but did not want them to focus on it more than necessary. “And I think I would really enjoy the travelling.”
“Have you done much?”
She shook her head. “No, not outside of Ireland, but I’ve always wanted to.”
His face brightened, obviously pleased with her response. “Have you eaten yet, Miss Tracey?”
“I ate at lunchtime,” she told him. She had her usual sandwich, which she had made in the kitchen in her lodgings, sitting at her desk. Today, being Friday, she had tinned salmon and cucumber.
“And then you came here straight from work?”
She told him that was the case and he then asked her if she had any plans for the evening.
“No, nothing in particular...”
He waved a hand to catch Tony’s attention. The waiter was wiping a table in readiness for fresh customers. He came quickly over.
“Tony, would you be a good man,” the major said, “and check if they have a table for two in the restaurant.” He looked at her. “It would be a pleasure to have your company, and it is of course my treat – but I hope I’m not being presumptuous with your time? You have no other arrangements?”
“No, I’m free and dinner would be lovely.”
The day, she thought, was becoming more and more unexpected. But, it was unexpected in a good way.
The longer she spent with her new employer, the more definite she felt about her decision to take the job. She had not changed her initial views on him being slightly odd, but he was growing on her. She felt there was a kindness about him and that made her feel more relaxed. They still hadn’t got around to discussing wages, but she knew if they were eating together she was bound to find the right time to bring it up.
Tony came back and told the major that there was a table for two available whenever they were ready.
“Good man,” the major said, pressing a florin into the waiter’s hand. “I think we’ll head in now.” He got to his feet, showing signs of stiffness in his legs as he did so. He then straightened his back and circled his shoulders a few times.
Angela picked up her scarf and put it around her neck, then stood up. The major moved back to allow her to walk before him. As she did so, she suddenly became conscious of her leg and limp. She straightened her back and then stepped forward, concentrating on keeping her gait as even as possible as they walked across the foyer.
Chapter 29
The restaurant was busy, but somehow a table had been found over in a corner. The menu was brought and the major told Angela to choose whatever she fancied.
“I think,” she said, “it will have to be fish.”
His brow furrowed and then it dawned on him. “Ah, yes,” he said, his face solemn. “Of course...the Friday fast.” He surveyed her for a few moments. “You know of course I’m of the other persuasion? The Protestant fraternity – Church of Ireland. That’s when I choose to go, of course, which isn’t too often these days. High days and holidays. It’s just occurred to me now – your family won’t have any concerns with you working for me?”
“No,” Angela said. “I can’t see that they would. Besides, I make my own decisions about work and that sort of thing.”
“Excellent,” he said. He halted. “I hope you don’t mind me being personal about another subject?”
She felt a sudden wariness. “I suppose it depends on what the subject is.”
He lifted his drink now and finished it off. “Do you mind me asking about your polio condition?”
“No, I don’t mind. It’s my left leg...” For a moment she considered lifting her leg up to show him as she would to a doctor or a nurse in the hospital, but she then thought better of it. It was too personal to show to a stranger.
“Does it give you much trouble?”
“It’s improved in the last few years,” she said. “Since I had the last surgery I don’t have to wear the calliper so often. I don’t have it on today as I knew I wouldn’t be doing much walking.”
“Excellent,” he said. “I have a young relative in England with polio – a cousin’s daughter – affecting both her legs and an arm, so I know how very debilitating it can be. It was because of her experience of it that I was asked to become involved with the Polio Fellowship.” He paused. “From my observation of you, your affliction is very little – comparatively, of course – I don’t mean to make light of it. You must have had the slightest brush with it.”
Angela felt a sudden surge of gratitude towards this odd, formal man. He had just confirmed her own thoughts about her weak leg – it had indeed improved.
“Thank you,” she said. “But it is the best it has ever been.” From somewhere inside her now, tears started to appear in the corners of her eyes. She blinked them back. “I spent long periods of my childhood and teenage years in hospital in Dublin, away from my family, having operations. I think in many ways it has made me more independent.”
“I can see that – and I applaud you for making your way in a very difficult situation.”
Angela smiled and shrugged, feeling embarrassed now at having revealed such a personal thing to someone she hardly knew. She wondered if it might be the gin and tonic.
“Few people are perfect, some are just better at hiding things than others. There are times when I have some difficulty with walking myself. The old back can play up, and at times I suffer from sciatica.” He caught her eye and smiled. “Bit of an old crock at times – but that’s the ageing process for you, while you of course still have youth on your side.”
The waitress came to the table now and she took their orders – Angela choosing cod in breadcrumbs and the major steak in a red wine sauce.
“Would you like anything to drink with your meal?” the waitress asked, holding out a wine menu.
“My thought exactly,” Major Harrington said, taking it from her. He looked at Angela. “Have you any preference?”
“No,” she said. “I’m not really a wine drinker.” She had only drunk it on occasions like Christmas or birthdays, and didn’t know one wine from another. In truth, she wasn’t over-keen on it, but she felt that it was something that most people in Major Harrington’s class were used to, and perhaps something that she would have to get to know a bit more about.
He studied the menu. “I think a white will be fine,” he said to the waitress. “Maybe a Reisling?” After she had left, he settled back in his chair, his clasped hands resting on the table and said, “Tell me about your family, Miss Tracey. Have you any brothers or sisters?”
“I have two sisters, Fiona and Bridget.” After making a mental note not to say anything more that was too personal or too contentious, Angela then proceeded to tell him about Fiona running the bar and shop since her father died, and then she explained about her younger sister’s vocation and the convent school where she was an aspirant nun.
“You sound as though you have a very diverse family,” he said. “I like that. I like hearing about young people who choose their own path in life. You and your sisters sound like independent young ladies.”
Angela thought about Fiona and New York and their mother. “At the moment,” she said, “things are not that straightforward.”
The waitress arrived with the wine and an ice-bucket and stand, and the major directed her to pour them a glass each. After she left the bottle reclining in the bucket and went, the major held his glass up again – and repeated the toast from earlier.
“To our working happily together!”
Angela held her glass up too, echoing his words and thinking again how strange a situation she had found herself in tonight. Then as she looked at him, something about his eyes and the way he was gesturing with his hands made her wonder about him. She had seen enough men c
oming and going from the family bar to recognise the signs. As she watched him lift the glass of wine now and take a good gulp, it occurred to her that not only had Major Harrington probably been drinking all afternoon – but now he actually seemed drunk.
As they ate their meal, the major talking loudly all the way through about a book of old family photographs he hoped to locate in England, Angela was conscious of some of the other diners glancing in their direction. There were two well-dressed women at the next table who kept watching them and, she thought, making comments about them. On several occasions, she noted one of them talking behind her hands, whilst gesturing with her eyes towards Major Harrington. It then dawned on Angela that they were probably speculating as to what the relationship might be between herself and her prospective employer. They probably thought she was his daughter. Their curiosity was so blatant that, when he held the menu out to her to pick a pudding, she deliberately leaned across the table, as though she found every word he said fascinating.
“No,” she said, smiling at him, “I’m quite happy with what I’ve eaten, but if it’s okay, I’ll have a coffee please.”
“Splendid,” he said, beaming at her. “We’ll make that two. The daily puddings aren’t always good for the old waistline. I can see, Miss Tracey, you’re going to have a good effect on me.”
Angela laughed now, and as she sat back she was conscious of the two gossiping women still watching her. Something about it struck her as funny. She lifted her glass up and took a drink, then she said in a clear voice that could be heard by the next table, “I’m really looking forward to moving into Moorhill House with you, Major Harrington.”
Then, just as she knew, he held his glass up again in a toast and said, “And I am happy to have found someone so suitable, so quickly.”
As they were drinking coffee, Angela’s thoughts returned to money, and she decided she needed to sort it out before they parted. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said in a low voice, “but we haven’t discussed finance yet.”
His eyes widened and he put his cup back down in the saucer. “Of course … I’m glad you brought it up, I should have mentioned it much earlier. I have already been advised of your current wages, which if I recall correctly was around twelve pounds? I thought if I upped it by say...another three pounds a week? Does that sound agreeable to you?” His brow suddenly furrowed. “Your lodgings and meals would be free of course.”
Angela smiled at him now, delighted. “That sounds very agreeable,” she said. The pay rise was as good as she had hoped for, and the saving in lodgings and food would make a massive difference.
“Excellent,” he said.
Then, as she watched him go to lift his coffee cup, and then change his mind and lift his wine glass instead, she hoped that he would remember all the promises he had made in the morning.
Chapter 30
The following morning Angela woke up feeling nauseous and with a dull pounding in her head. When she turned in the bed she felt dizzy, and wondered what on earth was happening to her, and if she was fit to make it out to the bathroom.
And then it all came flooding back to her. The memory of the night before in The Gresham Hotel with Major Harrington. She closed her eyes and groaned at the memory. How could she have been so stupid as to drink two glasses of wine after a gin and tonic? It wasn’t as if she didn’t know how it would affect her. When she was younger and new to living in Dublin, she had gone out with a fellow called John, who was an official in the Four Courts who was fond of a drink. After the cinema, they often went to a hotel lounge where he would have a few glasses of beer and she would drink lemonade or shandy or on certain occasions, a Babycham.
On one occasion they met up with friends of John’s – two couples – and the men all took turns buying rounds of drinks. One of the men came back with a surprise drink for the women which turned out to be brandy and Babycham. On first sip, Angela wasn’t too sure as it didn’t seem as sweet as the Babycham on its own. But, as she sipped some more, she got used to it and quite liked it. The other two men followed suit buying the same drinks and by the end of the night, Angela was seeing double. During the night, she had been violently sick, and the following day unfit for work. Since then, she had given strong drink a wide berth – until last night with Major Harrington. What had happened that had made her drop her guard and drink more than she should have, she didn’t know. Whatever it was, she thought it was stupid, stupid, stupid of her.
She pushed the stomach-churning thoughts away and concentrated on getting herself into a sitting position in bed, then she swung her legs out and stood up on the cold linoleum floor. She closed her eyes to steady herself, then carefully opened them and made her way over to the deep armchair to sit down and put on her slippers. She then went across to the wardrobe for her dressing-gown and, after putting it on, she lifted her stick which was hanging on the metal door handle. She stretched over to the top of her chest of drawers, for the hand-towel she kept there for her own use, as she did not like using the general towel in the bathroom.
She wasn’t too bad after all, she thought when she got out into the hallway. She was slightly fragile and still a bit dizzy, but she knew she was going to be okay. She had, she thought, got off lightly – given that she wasn’t used to drinking wine. She used the bathroom, brushed her teeth and washed herself, and then she went back to her room and lay down on the bed. She tried to fall back asleep again but instead she found herself going over the events of the previous night. It had, she remembered, been the oddest interview she had ever been to or heard about. She knew no one who had gone to meet a prospective employer and ended up having dinner with them and drinking far too much.
What, she wondered, had led to things veering off in such a bizarre direction? She then started going over the evening in minute detail – scrutinising things she might have said or done that contributed to it. She went around in circles and each time she reached the conclusion that the way things had turned out had not been because of her. Anything odd that had occurred or been spoken about, had been instigated by Major Harrington. She remembered quite clearly now that she had tried to monitor everything she said, recalled that she had stopped herself from telling him any real personal information. She was quite sure of that. She knew she had told him bits about her family, but nothing more than she had told anyone else who she knew in Dublin. There was, however, one thing that made her squirm with embarrassment when she remembered, and that was when she told him about being in hospital as a child. When she described how she felt on Christmas Day with no immediate family to visit her apart from Aunt Catherine and her husband and son, she knew it had come across as self-pitying.
She was embarrassed even now, thinking about it. Major Harrington had been sympathetic, but looking back she thought he might have felt she was being sorry for herself and resentful towards her parents and sisters, when no family was to blame for the unfortunate circumstances of her catching polio.
She tried to move her thoughts on to something else more constructive, but they kept sliding back to analyse each little scenario. Eventually, she decided that sleep was not going to come so she got up and went out into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. As she was waiting for the kettle to boil, she thought that she might visit her Aunt Catherine over the weekend and tell her about the new job and that she was moving out to Ballsbridge.
She needed to talk to someone about the interview and how she had stayed on to have a meal with her new employer, and maybe confide her fears about working for an older man who she thought drank a lot, probably on a regular basis. She would say nothing to Fiona yet until she had told her employers in the office, and had worked out the actual date she could start out in Moorhill House.
Angela was only in the office on Monday morning half an hour when she received a phone call from Steven Hall congratulating her on her first-class interview and subsequent job offer.
The job was definitely hers! The major had not been so intoxicated that he forgot h
is promises or changed his mind. Angela sat back in her chair, full of relief, as she listened to Mr Hall elaborate.
“Major Harrington rang me first thing Saturday morning,” he said, “to tell me how grateful he was that we had suggested you, and how impressed he was with your qualifications and office experience. He thought you were a most efficient and independent young woman. He was also delighted that you showed such an interest in his family research and great understanding of the project.” He paused. “I believe he offered you the post on the spot?”
“Yes. I have to admit I was surprised,” she said. “It was all so quick. I thought he might want to interview some other girls or take some time to think it over.”
“Well, as you have probably realised, Major Harrington is not like other men. He has his own views and makes his mind up quite independently.”
“He wants me to start as soon as possible,” Angela said. “Will that be a problem?”
“Well, we will be sorry to lose you, but we have others waiting in line for promotion, so hopefully it will all work out. I do understand that it’s a very quick change in both your work life and living circumstances. Have you any questions or worries about it?”
Angela thought for a moment. “No, I think it’s mainly just organising things here...”
“We can sort a van out to move your stuff across the city, so don’t worry about things like that.”
“I’m not really worrying,” Angela said. “I think it’s just because everything has been so quick. Hopefully, when I start work it will all work out. … I suppose it’s a little strange going to live with people you don’t really know. But I’m sure it will be fine...”
A Letter From America Page 25