‘Ye do now, do ye, your young ladyship?’ Mikey enquired. ‘And now why would dat be, do ye think?’
‘Because ever since I have got back here to Glendarven I have had the distinct impression that he has been watching me,’ Emily said.
By the end of November the house was still unsold. There had been scant interest in it anyway since it had been put on the market, for besides a consortium of business men from Galway who said they had come to view it with the idea of turning it into a sporting hotel and a banker from Dublin who was looking for a shooting lodge in the west but found the house both too big and too expensive for his purposes, consequently putting in an insultingly low offer, there was no other real interest. So as Christmas approached the Persses had more or less thrown in their hand, deciding that they would stay put until the New Year, financed by the proposed sale of a small piece of Carolean silver which Lord Oughterard had been holding back against the proverbial rainy day. After that they would move to rented accommodation in Dublin and await the sale of the house and estate before deciding on where next they might reside.
On the announcement of this news the whole house fell into despondency, even though everyone who remained there knew that such a move was inevitable because there had never been any real hope of redemption. The three younger girls did their best to brave it out, but the advent of Christmas proved too much, the thought of this being the very last time they would celebrate the feast as a family in their beloved home becoming too hard to bear. Like their mother whom they now hardly ever saw except first thing in the morning and last thing at night the three youngest now began to stay in their beds longer and longer, not only because their beds were about the only really warm places left in the house but also because there they could hide under their covers and cry their eyes out in peace.
By contrast Emily could not bear to be in the house for one moment longer than she needed to be, and although like her sisters her hands and feet were covered in chilblains still she rode out on Jack every morning and every afternoon no matter what the weather. Jack was her salvation. She swore it to her magnificent brave horse each and every time they came to the end of another enthralling gallop, stopping to rest at the foot of one of the great dark mountains or by the wind-whipped waters of a nearby lough. Without Jack she thought she might have killed herself, either thrown herself off the Cliffs of Moher into the wild and foaming Atlantic below or hurled herself down into the apparently bottomless gorge over which she had lepped on her famous day out with Captain Pilkington. In truth she would never have done so because she knew she had a duty to the family she loved.
Instead she had a few days out following hounds at the invitation of the new Master of the Blazers, but much as she loved riding the country both the overly pitying glances she received from the more friendly members and the whispering she heard behind her back from the less sympathetic ones entirely spoiled her pleasure, so since the new Master forbade anyone to follow their own line she used that as her reason for politely declining any further invitations after her fourth outing, and soon the summonses dried up altogether.
Someone out there, however, was thinking charitably of them, rather than blaming their financial misfortunes on Lord Oughterard’s bad management and his obsession with producing hounds bred specifically for the Blazer country, for in the week before Christmas a delivery cart arrived outside the house bearing two huge hampers, both of which when opened were found to be crammed full of food and wine for the forthcoming feast. Not only that but a gaggle of children from the school arrived unannounced up at the house armed with boxes of decorations, saying they had been requested to come and help prepare the house and tree for Christmas, but no-one would say who had sent them just as no-one could tell from whom had come the two hampers. But such was the infectious humour and enthusiasm of the children that within half an hour Elisabeth, Cecilia and Connie were all out of their beds and downstairs giving a more than helping hand, with the result that when Emily returned from her morning ride Glendarven had been transformed, looking less like an institution and more like a family home. The weather had turned cold but fine and dry so that it was possible to lay great log fires once more in the drawing and dining rooms without their being doused by the rain leaking in down the chimneys, while Cook put away her bottles of porter and set to preparing the great feast with the help of all four girls. All of them knew it was an illusion, but even so a feeling grew among the family and the servants who had refused to leave them that all was not quite lost and that somehow this Christmas might work a miracle yet.
Certainly Emily began to sense something. Just as she had sensed someone watching her since her arrival back in Ireland now she started to feel the advent of something strange and wonderful. She had loved Christmas since as long as she could remember and had always been as she said magicked by it all, but now more than ever she felt there to be something fantastic in the air, fantastic in its true sense of phenomenal, astonishing, inexplicable. She said nothing to anyone about her feelings, not to old Mikey, not to any of her sisters, not even to Jack as three days before Christmas they rode out determinedly across the wild land and on towards the mountains. For she knew that whatever it was was to be found out there, that whatever was coming was somewhere either hidden in the dark wintry hills or out of sight deep below the ground.
She rode all afternoon in the bitter cold. She rode until the frost returned and refroze the parts of the ground which earlier the sun had warmed to a thaw and she rode on until the sun began to slide away for the night behind the four great mountains whose foothills she had combed for she knew not what. But whatever it was she had not yet found it and as the evening grew colder and flakes of snow began to fall from the darkening sky Emily turned Jack for home with a heavily sinking heart, cantering where the ground was not yet frozen hard and walking where it was. Soon she had no real idea where she was, just that she was headed back for Glendarven as the snow fell ever more thickly in flakes big enough to stick for a while on her eyelashes so that she had to blink them off to see where she was going, and thick enough soon to make even that job all but impossible.
‘It’s up to you, Jack me boy,’ she said as the little daylight that had been left now finally failed. ‘You take us home, there’s a good horse.’
She knew he would because Jack knew every way home there was in the Blazer country from every point of the compass. So she slacked the reins and just left him to it. On they plodded through the snowstorm until at last they came to a steep hill to one side of which she could see a large mound covered in snow. At this point the blizzard suddenly eased and moments later it had stopped, and as it did a watery moon appeared from behind the scudding clouds, shedding enough light for Emily to see where they were.
They were not far from home now, because as she got her bearings she realized what the huge mound was that lay beneath the snow.
It was the lios, the ancient earthworks where in the second month of that year they had seen him, Emily, Fanny and old Mikey. As they were making their way down that very road they had all seen the tall man in the black cloak and hat mounted on his horse right beside the fort. And then when they had gone to find him they had found him gone, disappeared without a trace.
Now as Emily and Jack stopped in the deep snow there was no sound anywhere, not the call of an owl, not even a breath of wind. The whitened countryside stood still, frozen to rock, white as dove’s down, silent as time. Yet Jack heard something for he suddenly pricked both his big ears, turning his head at the same time towards the buried fort.
Emily heard nothing. She just sensed it, sensed the event before it happened, saw the phenomenon before it transpired. She knew he must have come from somewhere yet she could not see where, nor would she ever ask him should she be given the chance, for one moment there was just the landscape and when she looked again – that is if she had ever looked away – there he was beside the fort, a tall figure in a black hat and cloak aboard a small grey horse. She h
ad seen him arrive, watched him appear over the hill, or by the hill, or was it out of the hill? But wherever he had come from she had most surely seen him, arriving as if in a dream or as if out of one, that tall figure in a black hat and cloak aboard a sturdy grey horse.
That tall dark figure of Rory O’Connor.
For a moment neither of them spoke. They just sat on their horses and stared at each other. Then Emily threw back her head and laughed.
‘Mr O’Connor!’ she called. ‘For it is you, is it not? However and whatever—’
‘I was about to ask you the selfsame question, Lady Emily!’ he called back, his horse beginning to pick its way down the hill. ‘What are you doing out so late? And in such weather too?’
‘The same as you, most likely,’ Emily said, but now no longer laughing. ‘I was looking.’
‘Yes, Lady Emily,’ Rory said, getting ever closer on his horse. ‘I was looking, too. Now isn’t that a thing?’
He was opposite her, his horse facing her horse, neither animal showing the sort of circumspection which horses that are strange to each other do, but instead standing head close to head like lifelong stablemates.
‘What was it that you were searching for, Lady Emily?’ Rory enquired. ‘And if you had something lost, did you manage to find it?’
‘I’m not at all sure of the answer to either of those questions, Mr O’Connor,’ Emily said. ‘Now would you mind if we rode for home, for I am half frozen.’
After they had headed their horses up to the breast of the rise and walked on a hundred yards or so through the snow without either of them saying anything, Emily asked if she might ask her companion a question, to which he readily agreed.
‘Well to be fair it’s two questions really,’ Emily said. ‘What exactly were you doing out here? And where exactly did you come from?’
‘Ah well,’ Rory said with a laugh to his voice. ‘Now that is something I must tell you, Lady Emily.’
‘Good,’ Emily replied. ‘That was the entire point of my question. That I might indeed get an answer.’
‘No, no, Lady Emily. You misunderstand my meaning. What I meant by that is something I must tell you was that you should never ask that sort of question, lest the answer disappoints. You see, in a way you have the answers already, do you not? So whatever I tell you won’t add to what you already know. I will either disappoint you, or I will tell you what you are already thinking. Which in its way will be as great a disappointment because you will be half expecting to hear something else.’
‘Very well,’ Emily said, brushing away the snow which was still in Jack’s mane. ‘Let me ask you something altogether more straightforward. When did you get back home from America?’
‘That you wouldn’t know, and even if you hazard a guess you’ll hardly be disappointed if you’re wrong. I arrived home a fortnight ago today.’
‘And how did you find America?’
‘I didn’t. I let the captain of the ship do that.’
‘Very amusing.’
‘I thought it was quite amusing. Not very.’
‘You’re a right old spark, aren’t you, Mr O’Connor?’
‘Sure a spark’s no good without the tinder, Lady Emily. Now I have something to ask you, and it’s not what you were doing out here today because I know the answer to that well enough.’
‘Oh you do, do you?’
‘Yes I do, thank you.’
‘And that is?’ Emily asked, turning to look at him.
‘You mean you don’t know?’ Rory replied, looking straight back at her. ‘You really need me to tell you?’
‘I’ll say one thing America has done for you, if I may, Mr O’Connor. And that is it’s made you a whole lot more light-hearted.’
‘And I’ll say one thing for you, Lady Emily. England’s made you a whole lot more English.’
‘Oh, come on, it hasn’t?’ Emily asked, appalled. ‘Come on, it hasn’t really?’
Rory laughed. ‘Why should that be such a bad thing, Lady Emily? There are plenty of good things about the English. I think.’
‘You’re not really being serious?’
‘Not really. But you’ve changed.’
‘So have you.’
‘So have you.’
‘So have you.’
Emily tried to stare him out but Rory wasn’t going to let her. Finally Emily gave him best and burst into laughter.
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Wherever you came from and whatever you were doing out here, I am utterly mashed to see you again.’
‘Mashed, is it?’ Rory wondered. ‘Mashed. What in the name of all the saints do I take that to mean, Lady Emily?’
Fortunately it was dark enough to spare Emily’s blushes for she had been searching for a quite different word yet somehow had found this unknown word on her lips.
‘Delighted, it means, Mr O’Connor,’ Emily replied, but with only half a heart because she could see from his expression that he wasn’t going to let it go at that. ‘It means – delighted.’
‘Mashed,’ Rory repeated. ‘Mashed. Do you know, Lady Emily, I was under the impression it meant something quite different. I was under the impression it meant bewitched. At least that’s what it means according to Charles Godfrey Leland. “Those black-eyed beauties . . . mashing men for many generations . . .” Yes – he’s even written a ballad called “The Masher”. “They saw a Dream of Loveliness descending from a train.” But you say that wasn’t what you meant. That wasn’t what you actually meant by the word?’
‘Don’t you ever stop teasing?’
‘Probably not.’
‘And here was I thinking you were the serious sort.’
‘Teasers generally are. So what you meant by mashed was—’
‘All I meant was that I was pleased, that’s all, Mr O’Connor,’ Emily retorted. ‘Now get on with your question. You said you had a question for me.’
‘Ah yes, and indeed I do,’ Rory replied. ‘Will you ask me to dine with you at Christmas?’
‘You want to dine with us at Christmas?’ Emily repeated, trying to buy some much needed time, for again she was suddenly overcome by the feeling of something momentous happening. ‘Why ever should that be?’
‘Why ever?’ Rory repeated. ‘Ask me, Lady Emily Persse, and you will soon find the answer to your why ever.’
Something momentous had happened, but when Emily first learned of it she was not at all sure that it was even remotely tolerable. She arrived home intending to seek permission for Mr O’Connor to dine with them on Christmas Day only to find her mother up and dressed, sitting in front of a roaring fire in the drawing room surrounded by Elisabeth, Cecilia and Connie and opposite her father who was seated in his favourite wing chair dressed for dinner with a large glass of whisky in his hand. Every one of them was dressed for dinner, in fact, something none of them had been for so long now that Emily could scarce remember the exact last occasion they had sat down as a family in the dining room.
‘Something has happened,’ she said when she came in. ‘Something has happened. What is it?’
‘Something has happened indeed,’ her mother echoed, but in lightly mocking tones. ‘That’s a fine thing coming from you, Emmie, since we were just about to send out a search party.’
‘The girl’s back, is she?’ her father asked from the other side of the fireplace. ‘Good thing, too.’
‘You don’t have to worry when I’m out on Jack, you know that,’ Emily said, generally, going to pour herself a sherry from the decanter on the table.
‘I know that,’ her father said, ‘but your mother doesn’t.’
‘I’m sorry, Mamma,’ Emily said, going to sit beside her mother on the sofa. ‘But I was perfectly all right. Much more important, it’s wonderful to see you up again. And downstairs.’
‘Ah well, Emmie dearest,’ her mother sighed. ‘There was not a lot of point coming downstairs before when there was no downstairs to come down to.’
‘Tell the girl what’s hap
pened,’ Lord Oughterard demanded over the noise of his daughters’ laughter. ‘Will you tell the girl what’s happened, someone? Or shall I have to?’
Elisabeth came and sat the other side of Emily. ‘Someone’s bought the house, Emmie,’ she said. ‘Glendarven has been sold.’
‘Oh,’ Emily said, her heart suddenly like lead. ‘Oh, I see.’
‘Some chap has bought the place, Emily,’ her father called across the fire. ‘We’re out of the woods.’
‘I think that’s marvellous, Pappa,’ Emily replied. ‘At least, I don’t, because I don’t want us to go from here – but even so, if it means an end to your troubles, then of course I’m happy.’
‘Poppycock,’ her father said, holding out his empty glass blindly in front of him for someone to refill, which Connie did at once, hopping to her feet and hurrying across to the drinks. ‘Poppycock, Em. This is only a house, isn’t it? It’s a house. Bricks and mortar. And an awful lot of upkeep. Point is the chap’s agreed to pay the price we want. No haggling. No beating about the bush. Chap’s paying the full price so we really are out of the woods. Even be able to unpop some of the silver now. And some of the paintings.’
‘But I thought the bailiffs took almost everything, Pappa?’ Emily said. ‘I didn’t know you’d popped anything.’
‘Your father’s not a fool, you know,’ Lady Oughterard said. ‘He had all the best stuff put away long before those blackguards arrived.’
‘Who is it who has bought it, Pappa? What is he like?’
‘Haven’t the slightest,’ her father replied. ‘Been done, all of it, through agents and lawyers and the like. Far as I know, chap hasn’t even seen round the place. Just wants the whole estate lock, stock and barrel. What more do you need to know?’
Her father smiled, and looking across at him and then back at her mother and seeing how visibly relieved they both were, so much so that the years the strain and worry had added to them seemed all to have disappeared, Emily thought it was not quite the time to tell them of her news, nor ask permission to ask a guest for Christmas. Instead when they had all finished their drinks she took her mother’s and father’s arms and walked them through into the dining room where they all sat down to the first good and happy meal they had enjoyed together as a family since Emily had been spirited away to England.
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