The Eden Tree

by Doreen Owens Malek

  His eyebrows shot up. “Staying, are you? I didn’t know.”

  “Now you do. I would appreciate your help with any legal matters, of course, but the estate is mine and will remain so.”

  He shrugged. “Just as you say.” He reached for another folder on his desk and said, “This is your grandfather’s will and some of his other papers. We should go over all of this and get it out of the way. Have you the time to spend today?”

  “Yes. Mr. Clay will be back for me at four.”

  Fitzgibbon narrowed his eyes shrewdly. “And what do you think of our Mr. Clay?”

  “I don’t know,” Linn answered truthfully. “He was friendlier this morning, but when I first arrived he acted as though I were …intruding or something.” She looked up. The lawyer was eyeing her intently. She handed him Clay’s envelope. “That reminds me. He asked me to give you this.”

  “Ah, that will be his contract,” Fitzgibbon said, taking it. “I must get right to it. It’s already overdue, I’m thinking. His publisher will be haunting me.”

  “What does he write?” Linn asked, unable to stem her curiosity.

  Fitzgibbon’s eyes widened. “Did you not know? Con’s our famous local hereabouts; won lots of prizes, Con has. He writes under the name of Trevor Drennan, his da’s first name and his mother’s maiden name. He’s been published in the States if I recall rightly.”

  Linn sat dumbly, immobilized with shock. Con was Trevor Drennan? Linn had read everything he’d written, including his volume of Gaelic poetry in translation, The Eden Tree. It was her all time favorite; she had whole passages from it memorized. Her Ph.D. adviser at Columbia had thought that Drennan was the best thing to come out of Ireland since William Butler Yeats. Clay was a bona fide literary prodigy living in the cottage on her grandfather’s estate. His beautiful translations, published to critical acclaim, had established his academic reputation but they had only a small readership. It was his novels written in English that were commercially successful in the United Kingdom and at home. They dealt with the Irish present and were praised for their insight into both human nature and political realities. The most recent, A Terrible Beauty, had been a best seller.

  As she thought about his success Linn began to get annoyed. “Then he has money,” she said softly.

  “He has a lot of money,” the lawyer agreed.

  “So he could probably buy Ildathach five times over if he wanted to and have a fortune to spare.”

  “Like enough he could,” the lawyer answered

  Linn paused to consider the implications of that statement. If Con’s resentment didn’t result from an economic disparity between them, as she had thought, then what the heck was his problem?

  She looked at the lawyer.

  “In point of fact he’s been waiting to hear if you would sell,” Fitzgibbon added.

  Ah. So that was the source of Con’s resentment. He wanted Ildathach for himself and begrudged her inheritance. After all, he grew up on the estate and she had never seen it before in her life. Now he had to watch her take over without parting with a penny and then beg to buy it from the undeserving, upstart heiress.

  But as soon as she thought about it Linn realized that there had to be more to it. Something else was bothering Con, something not so easily explained.

  “Is that why he stays at the gatehouse when he could afford better?”

  Fitzgibbon shrugged. “He has a sentimental attachment to it since he was raised there. And he wanted to help out old Dermot if he could. The man was kind to few, but kind to him. Con says that it’s a good, quiet place to work with few distractions.” The lawyer sighed. “Of course that was before you came.”

  Linn let that pass. “That still doesn’t explain why he was acting like the lowly servant about to be ordered off the property when he could buy the place handily, lock, stock and barrel.”

  Fitzgibbon smiled. “His attitude has nothing to do with money. His parents were servants at Ildathach and he hasn’t forgotten that. In his eyes you’re still the daughter of the house and he’s the son of the help.”

  “That’s nonsense.”

  “That well may be but you forget where you are, Linn. Things change very slowly here. You may have noticed that the locals call him the ‘keeper.’ ”

  She nodded.

  “It’s an old term, from the days when there was game on the estate and a servant was appointed to care for the animals and keep out poachers. Now the game is gone and the poachers are extinct but the title remains. Con may sell a million books and be world famous, but to the people in this town he will always be the child of Dermot Pierce’s servants.”

  Linn considered her conversations with Con in light of this new knowledge. “He said something I didn’t understand when we were talking about the estate. He said that he was ‘the man by the wall.’ Do you know what that means?”

  “I do indeed. It’s a phrase from the old language, meaning a servant or serf. The property owner sat next to the fire and the others had to crowd around as best they could. The lowliest, the man by the wall, was the furthest from the source of heat.”

  Linn shook her head. “I never heard such garbage. He can’t really believe that.”

  Fitzgibbon gestured to indicate ignorance. “You’ll have to ask him, lass. Now shall we get on with this? There’s a lot to do here and it may take a while.”

  Linn listened, but only partially, as the lawyer went on to talk about her grandfather’s will. One corner of her brain was busily ruminating about Clay. Any hope she’d had of telling herself that her reaction to him was only a physical infatuation melted away like a dawn fog. He was Trevor Drennan. She’d greatly admired and respected him for years. How could she possibly resist him after this revelation?

  Fitzgibbon handed her a sheet of vellum and she cleared her mind to read it. She would have to deal with Connor Clay later.

  * * * *

  The object of Linn’s thoughts was thinking about her too. Connor sat before his typewriter in the gatehouse, staring into space. He could not get the woman off his mind. She was not turning out to be what he had expected. Her behavior this morning had confused him. She’d been nervous, embarrassed, almost…ashamed. This was hardly the reaction of a worldly sophisticate to a casual encounter. On the basis of her looks and initial behavior, he had put her into a category and it now appeared that she didn’t fit there. It was a puzzle.

  Con rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. His feelings certainly weren’t a puzzle. He could still taste her, smell her. She lingered like the savor of fine wine, like a tantalizing and exotic scent. In the glen at night she had been the most responsive woman he’d ever touched, and yet the next day she had withdrawn into herself and become another person. When he saw her in the morning, demure in her skirt and blouse, her hair primly bound, she was recognizable but different. It was as if the night had worked some magical transformation. But he had still been tortured by visions of her body as he’d seen it, by what he knew lay beneath her clothes. And that glorious hair— he’d longed to pull it free of its pins and spread it, like molten gold, over her ivory shoulders.

  Con made a sound of disgust and ripped the blank sheet of paper out of the typewriter. He rolled it into a ball and threw it against the far wall of the cottage. There would be no work done today. He glanced at his watch.

  Only three more hours before he could pick her up again.

  * * * *

  Linn was with Fitzgibbon until three o’clock. They had a working lunch of sandwiches supplied by his secretary, a silent young woman in a navy dress who appeared mysteriously and vanished the same way. By the time Linn took her leave she’d had enough of legal documents to last a lifetime. She strolled out into the street and looked around with interest.

  There weren’t many people abroad at mid afternoon in Bally, as the inhabitants called it. Even the monument was deserted now. She walked over to it and sat on the cool stone, propping her back against the column. What was good en
ough for Seamus Martin, schanachie of some note, was good enough for Linn.

  She looked down the main street (named for Daniel O’Connell, as almost everything was) and saw a man walking in the distance toward the church. Something in his gait reminded her of Rick. For the first time in a long while she allowed herself to entertain the memory, perhaps influenced by her surroundings. There was an air of nostalgia in this place that was almost palpable, as if the population lived half in the past. Linn stared unseeingly into space, remembering her ex-husband.

  She had met him when she was eighteen and married him when she was twenty. Everyone said they were too young, but they didn’t care; they were in love. They were both students but Rick’s family was wealthy and he had a trust fund sufficient to support them both. They began married life with the optimism which only the innocent can sustain.

  Linn’s father had warned her of Rick’s shyness, his timidity, which the older man suspected of concealing deeper problems. Linn would not listen; there was nothing wrong with Rick that her love and understanding couldn’t fix. His reticence was a hint of frailty in a wonderful person, and she could certainly help him to overcome whatever was bothering him.

  But it wasn’t until after they were married that the true nature of Rick’s problem was revealed. He had never pressed Linn sexually, never tried to take her to bed, and she had been grateful. She was a virgin and thought it considerate of him to wait. Once they were together she expected him to help her and initiate her.

  It soon became clear that Rick couldn’t even help himself. He was inadequate as a lover, often unable to perform, and their lovemaking sessions frequently degenerated into scenes with one or both of them in tears. Linn’s nerves suffered from the strain; she insisted that they go for counseling, which Rick flatly refused to do. The situation persisted until Rick’s family got wind of it. His parents maintained that the whole matter was Linn’s fault. She had been told about their concerns regarding their son, after all, and if she couldn’t make herself desirable to her husband what could she expect? Things got dramatic when Rick swallowed a bottle of tranquilizers Linn had been taking and was rushed to the hospital. There Linn learned from his doctor that Rick had been in analysis for years before he met her, confused about his sexual identity. He had apparently regarded his marriage to Linn as some sort of test, which he was failing. He couldn’t face that failure and attempted to escape.

  Linn was shocked and miserable, unable to believe that Rick and his parents had conspired to keep his background from her. The family wanted the whole matter cleared up as quickly as possible and arranged a fast divorce. Their main concern was the prevention of gossip. She would not have talked about the failure of her marriage anyway; it was as painful to her as it was to Rick and his family. So Linn followed her father’s advice and made a career for herself. She refused all alimony and borrowed the money for school from her father. Linn even learned to forgive Rick, who wasn’t a bad person, just desperate and confused. He felt deep regret about the way he had used her and in the end Linn pitied him and absolved him in her heart.

  Linn went back to her maiden name and spent the next five years immersed in the world of academe, avoiding entanglements with men at all costs. Once was enough. She was able to turn away even the most persistent with her aloofness and reserve, which had earned her the sobriquet of Ice Princess among the other graduate students. Once she completed her doctorate, she’d found her present position and had remained there until she got the news of her father’s death.

  And now the Ice Princess was in severe danger of melting. Connor Clay had caught her at a vulnerable moment and had breached her wall of indifference when her defenses were down. He had awakened old desires, old longings, with such a vengeance that she feared she would be consumed before she knew what was happening. When she had maintained to her friend Anne that she would never become involved again, Anne had replied wisely, “It only takes one.”

  Anne was right. One was all it took.

  Linn looked up from her reverie to see Connor leaning against a building across the way, watching her. She jumped. She had no idea how long he’d been there.

  When he saw that she was aware of him he sauntered over to the monument and put one foot up on its base, folding his arms on his upraised knee.

  “You were lost in the stars, my lady,” he said.

  “In the past,” Linn replied, ignoring his form of address.

  “Pleasant journey?” he inquired innocently, widening his eyes.

  “No,” Linn said shortly, making it clear that she did not wish to discuss it. Two could play that game.

  A small smile danced about the corners of his mouth at her tone. Linn had the unsettling feeling that he knew exactly what she was thinking.

  “Will you have some tea or a drop at the Arms?” Connor asked.

  Tea here, as in England, was a meal. “I’m not hungry, but I’ll have a drink,” Linn replied, drawn to him in spite of herself. She craved his company and couldn’t decline his invitation, though she knew she should.

  He took her hand to help her stand and Linn flashed on an image of his fingers enclosing her breast. She took a deep breath and withdrew her hand.

  Con led her to the pub, putting his arm above her head to open the old fashioned wooden door.

  The interior was dim and cool and Linn had to wait a moment for her eyes to adjust to the light. She focused first on the bar that ran the length of the room against the wall facing her, backed by an assortment of mirrors and framed posters, handbills and liquor advertisements. A banner proclaiming “Guinness is good for you” was draped along the top of the largest mirror. Several patrons sat on stools nursing drinks and conversing with the bartender, a rotund man with white hair who was using the bar mainly as a prop for his elbows while he talked. There were booths along two walls and tables were scattered around the rest of the room at random. A dartboard was tacked to the wall farthest from her and a game was in progress, with two cronies desultorily throwing darts and arguing about their accuracy. At a table near the door four men were playing cards, murmuring their calls and slapping the table decisively with the cards as if each move carried earthshaking implications. With the exception of a slim, pretty woman in an apron wiping glasses behind the bar, Linn was the only female in the place.

  All heads turned to watch their progress as Con steered her into a booth.

  “They’re all staring at me,” Linn hissed under her breath.

  “So they are,” Con replied, amused. “It must be your stunning beauty.”

  “Oh, shut up,” she said, shooting him a furious look. He was enjoying her discomfiture and she was wishing she had declined his offer. He had the advantage here and she didn’t like it.

  “What’s wrong, my lady?” he asked, smiling. “Not accustomed to so much attention?”

  “Stop calling me that,” Linn said angrily, keeping her voice down. “And you can knock off calling me ‘girl’ too, while you’re at it. I don’t like it. I’m a woman and my name is Linn.”

  The smile vanished from his face and his eyes took on that intimate, slumberous look she was coming to recognize in her soul.

  “I know you’re a woman, Linn,” he said. “I think no man knows it better than I do.” His voice was very low, but distinct.

  He was standing in the aisle next to her but she felt as if he’d touched her. She didn’t answer.

  “It’s just that you’re new here,” Con added reassuringly, his voice returning to normal. “The last interesting stranger we had here was The Lord Mayor of Dublin when his car broke down in front of Saint Michael’s on his yearly progress. That was in 1948.”

  Linn looked up at him and smiled. He knew that his comment had unnerved her and he was injecting a note of lightness to allow her to recover. It was a nice thing to do.

  “I don’t think I’m much competition for The Lord Mayor,” Linn said.

  “You’re prettier than he was,” Con said. “He had a paunch and a gr
eat, ugly nose. I’ll get your drink. What would you like? Our choices are somewhat limited here.”

  “What are you having?”

  “Stout.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Dark beer, of a sort.”

  “All right.” Linn watched him as he walked away. She felt a pair of eyes on her and looked up to see the woman behind the bar watching her. Her expression wasn’t friendly. Con spoke to her briefly as the bartender filled two glasses, and the woman turned her back on Con as he returned to the booth. Linn frowned. Trouble was afoot there.

  Con sat across from her and put a glass of something on the table in front of her. It was an evil looking brew the color of raw liver. Linn eyed it doubtfully.

  “Go on and try it,” Con urged.

  “This is like beer?”

  “Aye.”

  “Beer isn’t brown.”

  “Lager, then.”

  “What’s lager?”

  “Will you give over and try it?” Con said impatiently. “It won’t kill you.”

  Linn took a sip and made a face. “It’s bitter.”

  Con half rose from his seat. “I’ll get you something else.”

  Linn put her hand on his arm. “No, don’t get up.” She took a bigger sip and swallowed. “I think I’m getting used to it.”

  Con smiled slightly. “You’re a good sport.”

  “Am I?” Linn asked softly, meeting his eyes.

  “You are indeed,” he answered, holding her gaze.

  The moment was interrupted by the conclusion of the card game. The winner jumped up and danced a jig next to his chair.

  “He’s happy,” Linn commented, glad of the distraction.

  “Drunk, more likely,” Con observed philosophically, setting his glass back on the table. “When the drink is in the brains are out.”

  Linn watched him trace a circle of wetness on the table left by his glass. She glanced away. “Isn’t Clay an unusual name for an Irishman?” she asked.

  He looked up. “We’re not all named O’Shaughnessy, you know. My father was Anglo-Irish. There’s lots of Clays up Derry way. In a drought it would rain Clays.”