by Sara Seale
CHAPTER FIVE
I
JUDY, escaping as soon as she could from Marcia’s uncharacteristic desire for confidences, ran out on to the terrace to cool her cheeks before facing them all again for dinner. Mist rose from the lough meeting the growing twilight; soon the soft spring evenings would lengthen into those of early summer, and Raff and Marcia would wander by the water’s edge to avoid the latest guests’ invasion of their privacy, and the spell of Ireland would deepen about them, and he would kiss her, this time with gentleness.
“Oh, hell!” Judy exclaimed aloud, and turned, as she heard a footstep on the terrace behind her, grateful that it was Noel and not Raff who had followed her out.
“What are you blaspheming about so inelegantly in the damp night air?” he inquired, his eyes mocking her. “Did that unexpected but very workmanlike embrace upset you?”
“It would have been more tactful if they’d waited until they were alone,” she answered somewhat tartly.
“Darling, I doubt if either of them were aware at that moment if you even existed,” he said a little cruelly. “Well, it looks as though she may have brought him up to scratch at last. Our rather tedious young undergraduates served their purpose, after all. Poor Judy! Do you feel neglected? I’m always ready to oblige, you know, to bolster up your little ego.”
“My little ego is in quite good shape, thank you, and you, if I may say so, are rather cheap and boring.”
“Boring, am I? Oh, no, my pretty, that’s just sour grapes. Still, like Marcia, I go for the ones that are hard to get. You may continue to abuse me, if it amuses you.”
“Not very much about you amuses me at the moment,” she said, and he grinned.
“You can’t be on your dignity after that very funny exhibition in the bar,” he said. “What on earth possessed you to go crawling about on all fours?”
“So that I wouldn’t be seen, of course.”
“They wouldn’t have noticed if you’d walked out right past them, my sweet. Love is completely oblivious, didn’t you know?”
“Love?” faltered Judy, and he gave a little shrug.
“Call it what you like,” he replied. “My beautiful sister wouldn’t be above a little light dalliance, but not the O’Rafferty, would you think?”
“No,” she said bleakly, and turned to stare out over the water again.
“Have you lost your heart a little, poor innocent?” he asked, and moved up behind her to take her lightly by the shoulders.
“I don’t know,” she replied, but she did. She had known that day he had misunderstood her relations with Noel; she had known with every small rebuff or coldness, and this evening she had known it with pain and jealousy and a wild, unfamiliar stirring of the heart. Was it only through pain that one learnt these things? she wondered, and said quickly, before she was tempted to ask the question of someone who could have no counsel to give:
“This place must be beautiful in the summer ... sitting out here, watching the dusk fall ... that feeling this country gives you that nothing matters today because tomorrow will do...”
“Pretty deadly stagnation, if you want my opinion,” Noel answered. “All very well for a holiday, or folk with their heads in the clouds, but give me the bright lights.”
“Then why do you stay?”
“I’m broke, my sweet. Until I’ve built up a little reserve of capital I’m stuck with Castle Slyne.”
She moved uneasily, remembering her earlier suspicions. “Can you build up capital out of a manager’s salary alone?” she asked sharply, and felt his hands squeeze her shoulders with a warning pinch.
“Of course not, but there are pickings.”
“Such as fiddling the accounts, like the Lucases’ and those Americans’?”
“How unwisely curious you are, my sweet. I get a percentage of the takings in addition, if you must know, and there are a hundred ways of collecting perks via tradespeople’s commissions and the more unsuspecting guests—all quite legitimate in the hotel racket.”
“Is it? It sounds more to me as if your pockets were being lined at Raff’s expense. Shouldn’t all profits go back into the business?”
“All legitimate profits do, as you can see by the books. Don’t pry, my child, into matters that don’t concern you.”
And is your business with Grogan one of the matters that shouldn’t concern me?” she asked, but he leaned over her shoulder and gave the lobe of her ear a quick nip.
“Take that for impertinence!” he said teasingly. “My business with Grogan, for all you know, may be a matter that concerns Raff’s own finances. Have you thought of that?”
She had thought of it, of course, the first time she had drawn attention to the fake chest in the Small Saloon, but Raff had seemed so oblivious of the value of the treasures which his house held that it had seemed only too likely that he was being robbed. If, however, exchanges were being made with his authority, then to draw attention to them was an impertinence and an embarrassment.
She sighed, resting her head for a moment against Noel’s breast.
“I’ve thought of a lot of things, and they confuse me,” she said, and Raff’s voice behind them spoke suddenly out of the darkness.
“Judy—Noel—they’ve started dinner. Hadn’t you better come in?”
It was difficult to know how long he had been there, for he stood in the window embrasure, a tall, dark figure watching them, and neither of them had heard him come. Judy tried to twist herself free, but Noel held on to her shoulders, quite aware of the interlinked silhouette they must have made against the lighter background of the water.
“Judy was saying that she finds Slyne beautiful—she has a romantic conception of your country, Raff,” he said, and Raff stepped slowly on to the terrace. He wore, Judy observed with surprise, the old duffle coat which was a relic of his flying days, and carried a rod and a creel and the ancient haversack which held provisions for a lone expedition.
“It’s hardly the moment to indulge in romantic fancies,” he observed, looking at them coldly, and Noel replied, with his old impudence:
“Perhaps it’s the air. You haven’t a monopoly of romantic interludes, me boyo! Where are you off to, anyway, with dinner, you say, already on the table?”
“A spot of night fishing,” Raff answered curtly, and Judy, understanding that for him that meant solitude in which to think and, possibly, sort out his immediate problem, if problem it was, said softly:
“I’ll leave the side door unbolted, like I always do.”
“Don’t bother with late offerings—I have my provender with me,” he said, his soft voice unusually abrupt, and she became aware, only then, that she was still standing under the light pressure of Noel’s hands and that in the gathering darkness they must present the easy unconsciousness of intimacy. She wrenched herself away with a quick little twist of her body, but Raff only smiled, with a quizzical lift of the eyebrows, and walked towards the jetty.
“Well,” Noel observed, watching him, “I wouldn’t have thought the O’Rafferty would turn dog-in-the-manger.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you don’t know, I shan’t tell you. Really, Judy, you are either unbelievably ingenuous, or just plain simple. Come in to dinner.”
The meal was less trying than Judy had expected, thanks, possibly, to Raff’s absence, but Marcia wore a look of the cat that had eaten the canary and, for the rest of the evening, made herself charming to her undergraduate admirers, whose last night it was, lavish with drinks on the house to make up, she told them, for their host’s earlier inhospitality, and slapping them down with callous indifference when the liquor made them too bold in their advances.
The party broke up suddenly, with Marcia yawning her way to bed, and the young men soon following suit Judy stayed behind to give Noel a hand with the dirty glasses, but even he seemed weary of the evening and abandoned his chores to make the rounds and seek his own bed.
Judy finished the glasses, conscious
of weariness herself, and the sudden silence of the house. Idly she went round the room with a damp cloth, trying to remove stains from the furniture because it still hurt her to find rings and cigarette-burns on the mellowed wood of objects that could have been museum pieces; and the anachronism of a bar in what had once been a gracious retiring-room roused her anger afresh. Slyne was never meant for this, neither, she thought, would such half-and-half measures attract the clientele the Maules were aiming at. Why couldn’t they see that the place had its own standards and these would be more acceptable to the right type of visitor than Noel’s endeavours to ape a common road-house? How could Raff allow his home to be so abused for the sake of a woman who, once she owned it would ruthlessly commercialise any article on which she could lay hands?
She carried a tray of coffee and sandwiches to the study and made up the fire, enjoying the bitter-sweet scent of the turfs as they sprang into flame. Timsy must have forgotten the generator again, for the lights burned dimly and might, she knew from past experience, go out at any minute, so she lit the oil lamp which still stood on the mantelshelf and, watching the spreading circle of light, understood the servants’ preference for the old ways. She crouched on the hearth to enjoy the comfort of the fire for a moment and must have dozed, for she heard Raff come in, too late to make her escape before he found her.
“You shouldn’t have waited up,” he said, but he seemed to have forgotten his earlier injunction, for he started at once on the coffee and sandwiches.
“Have some?” he said, and because there was no second cup she tipped the sugar on to the tray and poured her coffee into the bowl.
“Did you catch any fish?” she asked, going back to the hearth and squatting on her heels.
“No, but I put my house in order.”
“Did you?”
“Well, not entirely, perhaps. Tomorrow the old problems will probably pile up, but out there on the water, life becomes simple and familiar.”
Whatever knots he had been trying to unravel, he had at least achieved relaxation and a return to the old companionship. His dark hair was plastered to his head with the rain, and even as she watched him, he rubbed away the drops which still clung to his bony features.
“It’s turning into a stinker of a night,” he observed comfortably, flinging himself into his favourite chair. “Have the lights gone again?”
“Just about to. I thought I’d better conserve them in case the guests start shouting for candles in the night. Rosie always forgets to replenish the boxes in the bedrooms.”
“What a crazy sort of guest house this is, isn’t it?”
“People would like the old ways, if you’d let them—the right sort of people, I mean.”
“I remember you told me that in the boat that morning I took you to the other side. I wonder if Marcia could be made to see it.”
“Marcia?” she queried tentatively, aware at once of being on dangerous ground.
“Well, she has the running of the place, he answered absently. “And in the future—” he did not finish the sentence, and she supposed, with a fresh little stab of mat now familiar pain, that he was thinking of the day when Marcia would have the right to order his house as she wished.
“Couldn’t you make her see that business might be better if Slyne was run as a typical Irish country house with no concessions to this day and age?” she said gently, and he sighed, glancing at her with the quickened interest she had found in him when they were out in the country alone
“The trouble is she’s become imbued with Noel’s ideas, he answered, frowning. “He thinks we’re all stick-in-the-muds over here.”
“You can’t alter people,” she said, and he replied with sudden sombreness: “No, and perhaps one has no right to try, but a woman is more adaptable—a woman can identify herself with someone she cares for—don’t you think so, Judy?”
“Some women,” she said carefully. “I don’t know a lot about these things, but—I would imagine everything would depend on how much she cared.”
It was evidently not the answer he wanted, for he moved impatiently and began rubbing the bridge of his nose with a finger.
“Yes. Yes, of course—and that could be the snag, couldn’t it?” he said.
“If it’s marriage you have in mind,” she retorted boldly, “you should at least be sure of that.”
He did not answer, but sat observing her through half-closed eyes, aware that she had suddenly come into focus for him. Her face was raised to his and he could see the mature hint of pain in her eyes and wide, unchildlike mouth; he could even see the scattering of freckles standing out clearly in the lamplight which burnished her hair, reminding him again of Kathy.
“You will always be sure, I think, Judy, because you are young and generous and angle-hearted, but so much water has gone under the bridge for me,” he said then.
“But you are the most single-hearted person I know,” she exclaimed with surprise. “For Slyne, for Ireland, and once for Kathy.”
“Perhaps, then, I’m just too old,” he replied with a smile, and the door opened suddenly to admit Marcia.
“Well,” she observed with a slight edge to her voice, “what a cosy scene! Do you often have midnight feasts, you and your secretary, darling?”
“She kindly made me some coffee for which I was very grateful after an evening’s soaking on the lough,” Raff replied, rising courteously.
“I can’t think what you wanted to dash out in the boat for just as dinner was starting,” she said a little crossly, then added, her head on one side: “I would have thought you and I had plenty to discuss in private this evening. Noel told me he’d asked you—”
“It can wait till tomorrow,” he interrupted pleasantly but firmly. “I had my own problems to sort out first, and I can never think clearly indoors.”
“Can’t you, darling? Well, I hope the damp air of your very wet country didn’t fail you. I missed you and spent a dull evening in consequence.”
Well, really! Judy thought, and nearly spoke aloud. How could she have the effrontery to make such a remark in the presence of someone who had witnessed the evening’s capers!
“Did you, Marcia?” he said indulgently, and his expression was inquiring and, uncharacteristically, a little shy as he looked down at her. She stood beside him, a hand tucked through his arm, the long velvet housecoat which she wore as a dressing-gown falling in graceful folds to her feet. Her dark hair was loose about her neck, and her fine eyes were brilliant with the knowledge of her own attractions. Judy grinned as she thought of her own unbecoming but useful red garment which clashed with her hair, and silently saluted Marcia for the appositeness of her effects
“It was dull, Judy, so take that smirk off your face,” Marcia said, mistaking the grin. “Being gay with a bunch of hearty undergraduates can be exhausting.”
“Very,” Raff remarked a little dryly. “But you seemed to be enjoying their attentions when last I saw you.”
“Perhaps I was working for an end,” she said, fluttering her long lashes at him, and his smile was both quizzical and a little puzzled.
“Were you, Marcia? I’m not really a jealous person, you know.”
“You’re a most infuriating one! Anyway, it worked, and I, for one, don’t believe that jealousy had nothing to do with it.”
They were quite exasperating, Judy thought in their ability to behave as if she were not present, but even as the thought crossed her mind, Marcia turned to her and said;
“Do you believe Raff’s boast, darling? You would claim, I suppose, that you’re above rousing jealousy in anyone, though I bet my little brother was giving you a lesson or two out there on the terrace.”
“Your brother and I were simply talking,” Judy said stiffly, aware that she was foolish to try to explain as she saw Raff’s eyebrows lift in a sceptical quirk and knew that the silhouette she and Noel had presented to him must have told quite a different story.
“He was biting my ear,” she said, and kne
w, even as she spoke, what a ridiculous statement it must sound.
Raff said nothing, but Marcia gave a low gurgle of amusement “And what was that a lesson for?” she asked.
“Nothing. Anyway, does it matter?” Judy looked at Raff as she spoke, but it was Marcia who answered.
“Not in the least,” she said. “Now, Judy, do show a grain of tact and go to bed. I want to talk to Raff.”
Judy scrambled to her feet at once, aware that she must have been in the way of both of them for some time. Raff bade her a grave goodnight, and as the study door closed behind her she heard Marcia say on a note of seductive invitation:
“Now that we’ve at last got rid of that tiresome girl, come and make love to me, darling.”
II
Every day she expected an engagement to be announced, and every day she was cheated of that final stab of pain. Raff seemed to have retired into his familiar absorption with his estate, but Marcia went about the place with fresh confidence, picking sharply on the servants where before she had been conciliatory, and giving orders without consulting Raff, as though she were already mistress of Slyne.
With the departure of the undergraduate party, Slyne had been virtually empty, which allowed the Colonel and old Miss Botley to resume their rather dictatorial ways, but by the end of April bookings began to come in again, and in May, Marcia said, the place would be full.
“We must have staff,” she told Raff. “Rosie and the other girls are all right for the casuals, but the American crowd will expect waiters in tuxedos and someone more prepossessing than Timsy to attend to their demands.”
“Then they shouldn’t pick on Slyne if they want a replica of hotel life in their own country,” he retorted mildly, and she gave vent to a small sound of impatience.