by Ann Bridge
“If she means Weber, that’s all she knows! There was a lot of fuss.”
“Weber is exactly whom she does mean—she mentioned his name. But Gerald, that’s rather interesting in one way. It looks as though she really does know very little indeed.”
“I don’t see that that helps much, except to clear her character! She’s obviously determined to support her precious Billy, as you call him, through thick and thin. I’d rather like to talk to Terence about this.”
“Terence? Oh, you mean old Lady Browne’s grandson. Why? I mean why not, of course!—but why, actually?”
“I’d like him to hear what you’ve told me, and learn anything more he may have sniffed out in the meantime.”
“How horrid that sounds” Julia said.
“What?”
“Sniffed out. Still, I suppose that’s exactly what I was doing.”
“Terry sniffs much more vigorously than you did!” he said, patting her shoulder. “And you were perfectly open with her, I gather, about where you stood. So I don’t think you need distress yourself.” He got up, with a glance at his watch.
“I’ll go and ring him up at once—I might just catch him before he leaves the office.”
“That’s all right” Gerald said, returning to the room a minute or two later. “He’s coming over as soon as he’s had a bite to eat. I just caught him, practically on the doorstep. Now come and have lunch.”
Over the meal—“Where does Mr. White work?” Julia asked.
“In Martinstown, in a lawyer’s office—like mine! I’ve sometimes thought I should try to tempt him to come into partnership. He’d be a great asset.”
“In what way?” Julia asked.
“Oh, he’s very bright, and he’s a taking fellow; and he knows everyone here in the West. And he’s young and active—he could take a lot off me, as time goes on.”
Julia agreed that this might be a good idea, and when Terence arrived watched him with rather more attention than she had given when they met before. He came while they were still sitting over their dreary coffee; she had failed to find a percolator in Martinstown, and the one she had ordered from Dublin had not yet come. Bridgie had been told to bring a third cup, but “No, no coffee, thanks” Terence said—so wisely, Julia thought.
“Brandy?” Gerald asked.
“Oh yes, please.”
Gerald went across the hall to the dining-room and returned with a bottle of brandy and, to Julia’s infinite relief, three glasses. “Some for you?” he asked her.
“Yes, rather.” She put her cup back on the tray.
“Well, sup some of that, and then tell Terence about Mrs. Martin.”
The brandy was as good as the sherry had been; Julia enjoyed it, and presently rehearsed to White an abbreviated version of what she had already told Gerald, emphasising the fair woman’s curious failure to understand the local point of view. At one point she mentioned Mrs. Martin’s having said that one reason why the season need not be so short was that the swimming-pools would be heated.
“Goodness, you never told me she said that!” O’Brien exclaimed.
“Didn’t I? Well she did. Is it important?”
“Only if Mrs. Martin knows that much detail, she must be pretty deeply in it, I’d say. What do you think?” he asked Terence.
“Up to her neck” White replied.
“Then why is she so vague about where Billy will try for a site next?” Julia asked.
“Because she didn’t want you to know—or he didn’t; it comes to the same thing! But that’s no harm, because I’ve got a very fair idea myself of where he’s after.”
“And where is that, Terry?” Gerald asked.
“D’you know that tiny little stone-built quay and harbour at Lettersall?” O’Brien nodded. “Well, the fishermen there—there’s six or seven boats fish out of that harbour—have seen (and heard!) a lot of Master Billy’s boat lately, cruising up and down beyond Lettersall, right out to the headland. What’s more they tell me they’ve even spotted him taking soundings, and going ashore and making measurements, both on the mainland and on those islands. D’you know the place I mean, Gerald?”
“I do indeed. You mean those two or three long bays of pure white sand; and the islands just opposite them have sandy beaches as well.”
“That’s the spot. There’s a perfectly decent road, too, down to Lettersall, and actually it continues along the coast and then turns inland to join the road from Lough Sayle that goes down towards Galway. It’s one of the most exquisite stretches of country in the whole of the West; on the other hand it’s got practically everything that Billy wants, damn him!—easy access, sheltered water, marvellous beaches, glorious views.”
“Yes, I can see that for his loathsome purposes it’s ideal” Gerald said, thoughtfully. “All that strip of coast is on your grandmother’s land, isn’t it?”
“Unfortunately, it is.”
“Did he approach her yet, do you know?”
“He’d hardly dare!—not in person. She’d set the dogs on him if she saw him coming up the path to the door!—if it was more than the two old pugs she had in it” Terence said, laughing.
“Why would she do that? Is she against his development scheme, then?” Julia asked hopefully.
“No, ‘tis Billy she’s against! She thinks he’s an immoral character, and a bad influence.”
“Is he an immoral character?” Julia asked, thinking of the fair woman’s encomiums—“Kind, good, clever; always wanting to help people.”
“I wouldn’t know!” Terence White said. “And I’m certain Grandmother doesn’t!—doesn’t know definitely of anything that you or I would call immoral, anyhow. He writes poetry, with a leftish tinge, and spends a lot of time with the lefty crowd in Dublin; she’s heard that much, and that’s enough for her.”
“If he were to put this scheme through she’d be right about his being a bad influence” Gerald observed.
“True for you! And he may lead the girls round Rostrunk astray, for anything I know. But I don’t know, and nor does she.”
“But if he can’t approach her himself, how will he set about trying to buy her land?” Julia very reasonably asked.
“Ah, that’s the 64,000-dollar question, Mrs. Jamieson! He’ll have to use a go-between, but who will it be?”
“Her lawyers?” Julia suggested. Both the men laughed.
“Gerald here is her lawyer!” Terence said. “But I don’t think she’d use him over this—I think she’d just take cash in notes and bank it. She’s very secretive, is Grandmother.”
“But will Mr. O’Rahilly, or his go-between—whoever that may turn out to be—hand over the cash before they know that they can get planning permission for the hotel and casino and what-have-you?” Julia objected. “One would hardly have thought that likely.”
“Ah, there seem to be two 64,000-dollar questions in this business!” Terence said, laughing again. “In fact it bristles with them!”
“In view of what we know of who is probably behind Billy, money-wise, I should say it was most unlikely” Gerald remarked.
“What do you know of ‘Mr. X.’?” Terence asked, suddenly looking very alert.
“Ah, we didn’t tell you that yet. According to Josie the husband of Julia’s pretty friend, Mrs. Martin, is the Martin half of Sherwood Martin.”
Terence White gave a long whistle.
“Good grief! No, he’d certainly never put up a single cent without being sure of the next five moves ahead! Do you suppose he’s sent her over to supervise the deal?”
“No, that I’m sure he hasn’t. They’re separated—at least seven years ago” Julia stated roundly,
“How can you be so positive ’twas that long ago, Julia?” Gerald asked.
“By the children’s ages—they must be at least ten and twelve now, and she said they were only three and five when she came away.”
“You seem to have got onto rather confidential terms with the lady” White remarked.
>
“In a way, yes” Julia answered, in rather a chilly tone. “But that is hardly relevant, is it?” she added repressively. “The important thing, surely, is to find out who is Mr. Martin’s agent over here, besides Billy—if he has one.”
“Wait now—I believe I have an idea,” Terence said. “One day in the bar at Gresham’s I overheard Peter Moran talking to a man I didn’t know about ‘a deal in the West,’ and he mentioned the name Martin. Yes!—I’m sure he said something like ‘You know you can rely on Martin.’ Peter’s very much tied up in deals and gambles of all kinds to do with property.”
“I thought he was an architect” said Gerald.
“So he is—quite a good one, I believe—anyhow he belongs to that large firm of architects, half of whom are Morans. So he has all the technical qualifications for assessing what state a house is in, and what it’s worth. But I’d say he spends far less time at the drawing-board, actually designing houses, than he does going round vetting properties, and in club and bars fixing up deals. Surely you know him, Gerald?—tall and dark, and quite unhealthily handsome?”
“Generally wearing a Charvet tie?” O’Brien asked, his sardonic grin appearing again.
“I should think so—he’s always dressed up to the nines!”
Julia’s thoughts, at this description, flew to the man she had watched seeing the fair woman off at Westland Row; it fitted him uncannily. Oh dear! But Terence was going on.
“Anyhow he’d be the ideal person for Martin to use, if he wanted to start a development racket over here. He often goes to the States, too.”
“Do you think he would be the actual person who’d hand over the cash?” Gerald asked.
“He might, very well. Let Billy do the preliminary scouting round, and he be in charge of the business side. He’d probably be able to get some sort of assurance in advance from the planning permission people, too.” He turned to Julia. “Don’t you think you’d better go over and call on my grandmother and look at the famous fur coat? You might learn a bit about what goes on, so. You didn’t go yet, did you?”
“No.” If Julia had spoken what was in her mind she would have added “And I don’t want to”—she was increasingly reluctant to become any more involved in uncovering O’Rahilly’s activities, since they seemed to show the fair woman, whom she had so much liked, in an unfavourable light. But the flat monosyllable, to Gerald, showed her reluctance clearly enough.
“We do need to know, Julia, you know” he said.
“What I don’t understand is what you can do if you do know” Julia objected, “unless Mr. White can think of some way of persuading his grandmother not to sell, which I gather is unlikely. We have no access to Mr. Martin, and no hold over him—nothing to persuade him with; and if this Moran person can really fix the planning permission people—with a quid pro quo in some shape or form, I suppose—there goes our last hope of stopping it. After all, Weber wasn’t stopped.”
“What do you know about Weber?” Terence White looked surprised. “And how did you hear of him?”
“Mrs. Martin just mentioned his name as someone who had done a bit of developing on the lines of what Billy wants to do, and had got away with it—only Gerald says he didn’t really” Julia added, not very coherently.
“Well, he was stopped from putting up his ghastly casino; there was such a stink locally that his factory and hotel and his châlet village were all he did get planning permission for,” Terence said, in a satisfied tone.
“Not his crawfish pens?” Julia asked.
“Oh, nobody minded them—they don’t show, and in fact they’re quite a help to the fishermen” Terence said. “He got permission for them all right. But he’s an awkward customer; he’d be as sick as mud if he thought anyone else—such as Billy—was being allowed to do more than he had been. He’d lay him a stymie if he could.”
“But how could he?” Julia was puzzled.
“Oh, in a dozen ways. Anyhow, will you go and look at Grandmother’s—or rather, my mamma’s—un-mink coat?”
“Oh, very well” said Julia resignedly.
Chapter 5
After terence white had left—he was going to play golf on Lord Oldport’s course in the Park at Martinstown—Gerald said, “Now, darling, is there anything else you want to see, while you’re here?”
Julia hesitated.
“Well, there might be, but I don’t know if it exists” she said slowly.
“Dearest, what can you mean? Do explain.”
“Well haven’t you any young neighbours?” she asked, rather explosively. “All those people at the Fitzgeralds were about a thousand!—except Terence, and he’s not married. Aren’t there any people with young children?”
“Oh, for The Peanut—yes, I see. Well there are the Peter Herlihys; they’ve got two or three.”
“What sort of age?”
“Oh, quite young, they must be—Peter only married Sonia seven or eight years ago.”
“And where do they live?”
“The other side of the Lough, near Beltraveen.”
“Oh dear, that’s not much good.”
“It’s only about twenty minutes in the launch,” Gerald said, a little dashed.
“Yes, but I don’t suppose Nannie Mack can navigate the launch!—it would mean you, or a man. Better than nothing, for now and again” she added hastily, seeing his clouded face. “But I meant within walking distance, to play with quite often.”
“I don’t think there’s anyone nearer than Ballibrigan” he said. “There are several couples with young families there.”
“Is that the little town we came through last time?”
“Yes, where my office is. But that’s all of three miles. Darling, I am sorry.”
“Aren’t any of your men married?” Julia asked.
“MacGarry is.”
“Any children?”
“Dozens!” Gerald said, grinning.
“And how far off does he live?”
“Right here—the cottage is just beyond the haggard. I built it for them when he got married, to have him close by; his old cottage was two miles away, and it was falling to pieces anyhow.”
“Well there you are, then,” Julia said cheerfully. “What sort of ages?”
“Everything from zero to the lower teens, I’d say—and a new one every year!”
“Perfect—then there are bound to be two or three to fit the Philipino.”
“What will Nannie Mack say? Will she approve?”
“Oh my dear, Nannie Mack is Highland! Who was it who said that the Scots don’t have ‘the personage system’? Anyhow they were quite right, though personally I don’t see any need to use such an elegant euphemism to camouflage an unpleasant thing like snobbery!” Julia said vigorously.
“Would you like to come and see them?” Gerald asked; he looked more cheerful.
“Adore to” Julia said, getting up.
“Oh, you’d better put on a mack; it’s coming on to rain” he said.
The MacGarrys’ cottage was, as Gerald had said, just beyond the haggard; a gate gave onto a flagged path leading to a whitewashed two-storey building with a slate roof—a patch of ground in front was planted with shallots and potatoes, practically the only things the Irish country-people, left to themselves, ever grow. Mrs. MacGarry, a pleasant-faced young woman in the middle thirties, opened the door to Gerald’s knock, and with the easy unembarrassed courtesy of the Irish country-side led them through a narrow lobby into a large kitchen, which to Julia’s eyes seemed to be quite full of a flock of children of all ages: a girl who might have been as much as eleven was skilfully jigging a baby to and fro in a pram to stop it crying, some quite small ones were seated at a table in the window eating bread and jam, and to Julia’s astonishment and dismay drinking watery tea from tin mugs; others, rather older, were scuffling on the cement floor—they were all perfectly clean and neat, with well-washed well-brushed hair, Julia noticed; when summoned to be introduced the older ones shook hands
politely—the smaller fled to their mother’s skirts and hid their faces. Full as the kitchen was of children, there was very little else in it—another table at which Mrs. MacGarry was in the middle of making soda-bread, a small range, a single ancient armchair before the open hearth, on which a turf fire burned, and one or two more kitchen chairs more or less completed the furnishings; a shelf on the wall held a couple of saucepans, and on another, a tiny oil-lamp burned before the inevitable statue of the Infant Jesus of Prague, in its brightly coloured, stiff mediaeval dress. Julia, as bidden, sat down in the armchair; Mrs. MacGarry, wiping her floury hands on her apron, drew up another for Gerald and one for herself— “Nana, do you take the Baba into the hall” she said.
O’Brien enquired whether the new lot of anthracite was doing all right in the range?
“Oh yes, thank you, Mr. O’Brien—’twas a bit slow at first, but Mac put some more draught on her with the register, and we get lovely hot water now.”
“Good. Every lot of anthracite has its own tricks” he explained to Julia—“we never get two lots exactly alike.”
Julia asked how many of the children went to school.
“All down to Elisabeth”—Mrs. MacGarry indicated a singularly beautiful little girl who was one of the tea-drinkers. “Come and speak to the lady, Elisabeth.”
The child scrambled down from her chair and came and held out a tiny hand. “How old is she?” Julia asked.
“She’s four last month.”
“Goodness, do they have to go as young as that?” Julia said, surprised.
“No, the others didn’t go till they were five; but the school-mistress wanted to get the numbers up, that way she’d qualify for an assistant, so she asked if Elisabeth could go.”
“How far is the school?” Julia put this question to Gerald.
“The better part of two miles” he said, his grin appearing again.
“Gracious! How does she get there?”
“She walks it” said Elisabeth’s mother cheerfully.