Kate stifled her tears. She so wanted to please, especially now, with him allowing her to go to school with Jennifer.
"Yes, well," he sighed, "I suppose you are at a difficult age."
Kate wished the floor would open up and swallow her.
Then two porters arrived to collect some cases, and mercifully Aunt Alison entered as they left. "May I come in?" she said, stepping through the open door.
Kate flew to her.
"Kate?" said Aunt Alison, giving Lord Averdale a peculiar look..
He left shortly afterwards. Kate dissolved into tears and couldn't stop for an hour. "He hates me," she sobbed, "I could tell ... and he's been so nice, so kind ..."
"I'd go red too if someone stared at me like that," Jenny said loyally. "It's positively weird."
But Kate remembered when she had liked to parade in front of him. It had been their game. How pleased he had been then, how obviously disappointed now.
Eventually she responded to their comforting, especially when Uncle Linc said, "Gee Honey, last night he was saying you're even prettier now than when you went away."
It was nice to hear but Kate disbelieved him. Something had gone wrong with her lately. Her arms and legs had grown out of proportion. She was ungainly. She woke every morning to find new pimples on her face. Was it any wonder she blushed all the time? She was turning into a freak.
Thankfully she had little time to dwell on herself. Uncle Linc had lived in a bachelor flat "until my bride arrived". Now he wanted a house but finding one in bombed-out London was not easy. After searching for weeks he had found only two that were possible. The whole family spent the afternoon viewing them. Aunt Alison's disappointment was obvious. Finally she chose the one in Highgate. "It needs fixing up, but at least it's roomy enough for when we're all together," she glanced at Kate, "assuming your guardian doesn't hog you all to himself."
Kate saw no danger of that. She quite expected him to write saying she had grown so fat and ugly that he never wanted to see her again. She wished they had stayed in America. True, she had got what she wanted - she was going to school with Jenny - but the pain of her guardian's rejection had been mortifying. She disliked this new phase of her life, and it became even more painful the next day - when they went to Victoria Station to put Yvette on the boat train for Paris. Kate had known the little French woman for six years. Now they were to be parted. Everyone wept. Even Uncle Linc kept blowing his nose and saying Yvette must come over and visit...
They waved and waved until the train disappeared into the distance.
Schools were a problem. Uncle Linc had investigated schools. "It's not a walk in the park, Alison honey. Schools got turned upside down in this war along with everything else. Some are still closed, and others - well they're so darned picky you've got to be royalty to get in."
"Well you are a Consul at the American Embassy, and Kate is Lord Averdale's ward."
At least Uncle Linc had found three to chose from. "One is in Scotland," he said apologetically, "but I'm told the Scots are very good educators."
Aunt Alison had never heard of them. She asked about Roedean and various others, but Uncle Linc shook his head. "Not a prayer, honey."
It was yet another difference between pre-war Britain and the austere land to which they had returned, and Aunt Alison said so. The bomb damage frightened her, and the way people lived - with everything rationed, and quite ordinary every-day American things unobtainable "Honestly Linc, I don't think I'll cope."
The next day Aunt Alison took the girls to Windsor for an appointment with the headmistress of Glossops.
"What a crazy name," Jenny complained. "Imagine being asked where you went to school and saying Glossops. Mummy, you must be joking."
But Mummy was not - with food rationed just feeding her girls was a worry, at least a school would do that. Post-war England was fast inducing a state of panic.
Glossops turned out to be an Edwardian mansion set in the middle of parkland - situated within the boundaries of adjoining Maidenhead rather than Windsor, an accident of geography which caused the school's eighty maidens some embarrassment with the more loud-mouthed of the local boys.
Miss Jenkins, the Principal, was a tall, thin woman in her late forties who actually used a lorgnette, the first Kate had seen. She and Jenny sat demurely facing the desk while Miss Jenkins raised her eyeglasses in constant inspection.
Glossops, they were told, was not an establishment for the frivolous, nor one for bluestockings. "We excel at turning out well rounded young ladies," Miss Jenkins told Aunt Alison. "Gals from here inevitably marry men in high places - statesmen, industrialists - quite simply, Glossops gals run the best houses in England."
The school's facilities included a gymnasium, hockey-pitches, stables ... "Glossops gals have the best seats in the country" ... domestic science rooms, a studio with huge north-facing windows, libraries, music rooms...
... Kate and Jenny trudged round on a tour of inspection. Neither liked what they saw. Aunt Alison had promoted the delights of "a good school in England" for years, but it had been a shadowy concept. The reality - the sight of so many girls wearing the most hideous uniforms - blue serge with box-pleats ("frumps", Jenny whispered) and hats made of felt » ("like Al Capone", Kate groaned) filled them with horror.
On the way back to London Jenny said, "Do we have to go to school? It was fun with Yvette -"
"Darling we'll never find another Yvette. Besides you should go to school, you'll like it once you've settled in."
The next morning they travelled to Esher but the school there looked even worse. Jenny said, "I think we're just too old for schools!"
That night they petitioned Uncle Linc but he sided with Aunt Alison. It was Glossops or Esher. The school in Scotland was just too far away for a visit of inspection. With sinking hearts Kate and Jenny chose Glossops.
They started a week later and hated it. Life seemed a muddle to Kate, Glossops was appalling. The only blessing was Jennifer. At night they shared a room with two other girls - Rosemary Danvers-Smythe and Angela Worthington - and by day they struggled with the curriculum. Thanks to six years with Yvette, Kate had the best French accent in school, but other subjects defeated her, especially mathematics. Glossops, Kate decided, was hell. But what lay beyond? One day Jenny would go back to America with Aunt Alison and Uncle Linc ... and Kate faced a future with a guardian who loathed the very sight of her.
Mark Averdale had been shattered by Kate's appearance. He had tried to disguise his dismay, but he had waited so long and expected so much ...
After leaving her at the Savoy that day he had returned to his club in despair. By the afternoon he was at St John's Wood telling Molly about it. "The photographs gave me no idea," he said bitterly, "but she's so ...so gawky. She lacks grace, everything about her is clumsy and awkward ... and Molly her complexion, her skin is terrible."
Molly had tried to warn him. Only the week before she had said, "Girls develop differently. They go through stages - after all, she's not quite fifteen, you mustn't expect..."
"I blame the Johnstones," he was saying, "Americans have no idea
It took her the rest of the evening to calm him. She said all the right things. "Blushing and pimples are part of growing up. She's lost her baby prettiness, that's all. You wanted a woman and you'll get one -"
"I wanted Kate -"
"It's the chrysalis stage. Another couple of years and her skin will clear
Mark was inconsolable. "I was wrong. I've been a fool. All these years ... I mean just look at my life! All this waiting ... waiting for Kate, waiting to get that bastard Riordan ... meanwhile everything is changing, and not for the better if you ask me."
The following day he travelled back to Ulster, only to be met by yet more bad news. His bank in Nairobi had written again about the Bowley estates. The situation was growing quite critical.
He read their latest letter again and groaned. "Something must be done. If things continue as they are,
you could be faced with the liquidation of the entire Averdale holdings in East Africa."
That was frightening. Before the war the Bowley estates had generated profits of sixty thousand a year, net with everything paid. And Mark needed that money for the Averdale Foundation - the great art collection was the only dream left to him. During the war he had added to it, but with the coming of peace he intended to be much more active. The collection would grow at a faster rate - but that would require a great deal of money ... So Mark Averdale grasped the nettle once more. He would go to Africa himself and salvage the Bowley estates. It had to be done and he had to do it.
Six weeks later he was back at St John's Wood, telling Molly his decision.
She was very sympathetic. "Poor darling. You are having a wretched time. But it will pass, these things always do. You've just got to learn to have patience."
Matt Riordan had learned patience on the Curragh. Long years in the bleak prison camp had been hard to endure - but Matt was a survivor. That was clear even in 1945. Just as his misfortunes were clear. Matt Riordan can never be said to have been lucky.
Yet his escape to England went well... at least to begin with.
They had landed along the coast from Southampton, and gone directly to the cottage at Lymington. The cottage was perfect, isolated, almost remote, on the edge of the New Forest, a mile out of town. Three bedrooms, a bathroom with a proper catch on the door, two rooms downstairs and a kitchen. Clancy's cousin Bridie had found it. She was in the kitchen when they arrived, ready to serve the best meal Matt had ever tasted. Matt blushed when he looked at her. She was the first woman he had seen in seven years.
Matt awoke early next morning, at just after dawn. Five minutes later he was out in the lane. The sun inched above the tree line to cast warmth on his face. Freedom! He had not dared think of it before, certainly not in Dublin with Dev's manhunt braying in their ears. Even crossing the water, doubled up in that locker, not knowing what was happening, imagining every noise to be a boarding party ...
Matt hawked and spat, expelling fear and phlegm together.
He walked a long way without really meaning to, stretching his legs, marvelling at being able to go fifty yards without meeting barbed wire. A breeze carried the scent of the sea. He strolled up the lane and into the woods. Birds sang. A squirrel raced up a tree. Matt watched the tiny animal disappear into the branches. Freedom! He had been locked up so long and seen nothing of nowhere since his escape, moved in a closed van, hidden in an attic out of the Howth peninsula, then the boat trip across ... Ferdy was dead. Half the bloody world was dead. But Matt Riordan was alive, and Matt Riordan was free!
Bridie was in the kitchen when he got back. He felt shy talking to her. She wore a sleeveless dress and when she reached for a saucepan black hair showed beneath her arms. Black hair against firm white flesh.
Clancy came through the door, "Grand day Matt." He laughed excitedly, "Sure aren't they all from now on."
Flynn came down the stairs, lighting a cigarette. "Wouldn't you know even a fag tastes better when you're not watching out for some bloody screw."
And Casey joined them a few minutes later, sniffing appreciatively at the smell of bacon frying in the pan.
"There's only one rasher each," Bridie warned. "Wouldn't I feed you better in the auld country."
"Like they did on the Curragh, you mean? Sure don't worry yourself Bridie, we're living like kings."
Bridie had done well. There was plenty of food in the larder. She had bought it at different shops in different towns, adding to the store slowly. They had money too, nearly six hundred pounds left from Clancy's bank raids in Dublin - and they were armed. Nobody carried a gun, but six Lee Enfields and five hundred shells were hidden behind the water tank in the loft.
The Matt Riordan Faction was in business.
They spent the morning drinking tea and discussing their plans. Costello and the others were already in London ...
"Will you go up to London in the morning then, Matt?" Clancy asked.
Matt nodded. He and Casey would travel together and join up with Costello. Clancy and Flynn would come up the day after, leaving Bridie to mind the house. In London they would all camp down in Kilburn, losing themselves among a hundred thousand Irish in a district where brogue voices were as common as fleas. The Lymington house was to be kept as a safe house - a place to which to retreat if things went wrong.
Bridie went down to the town to buy the newspapers. Only the Herald carried the story of their escape from Dublin, but without a picture of Matt, just the rumour that he was suspected of being in Belfast.
Clancy chuckled, "Won't your man Averdale squirm when he reads that."
Matt smiled. He planned to make them all sweat. He wondered if Connors knew. Dev certainly knew - Dev had sent his detectives into every pub in Dublin. Eight guards had been killed when Matt Riordan escaped. Dev had stood at eight gravesides, mouthing his usual pious bilge about brave men dying for Ireland. "We'll be needing those guns up in London," Casey said. "They'll be no use at all down here."
"There's time for that," Matt said, "but I don't like the idea of guns in the house. If the police ever search ..."
"Won't we be burying them? We've still got the oilskins," Clancy said. "Wouldn't they be better off buried out the back there for now?"
They picked a spot from the kitchen window and left the job until later. There was plenty of time. They all wanted a few hours to relax. So they spent a happy afternoon lounging around, drinking tea and smoking cigarettes, and laughing and joking. So much so that dusk had settled by the time they remembered the rifles.
Matt took a chair up to the landing. The trapdoor to the loft was set in the ceiling directly above the top stair. Clancy held the chair steady while Matt levered himself up. He fumbled across the rafters to the water tank, then made six journeys with the rifles, passing them down one at a time before returning for the ammunition. The boxes were heavy. Carrying them was awkward, with his head bent under the eaves and his feet edging along the rafters. There were four boxes so he made four journeys, just to be on the safe side.
Three boxes had been lowered into Clancy's waiting hands - then, as Matt stretched down with the fourth, he slipped. He fell head first. Clancy toppled from the chair. Matt plunged past. His back slammed into the balustrade with a sickening crunch. He catapulted over, smashing straight into the banisters. Then he somersaulted downwards, to hit the stone floor below with tremendous force.
Bridie shrieked and ran into the hall.
Clancy staggered like a drunk on the landing.
Flynn emerged from the back room, "Dear God, what the ..."
Bridie reached Matt first. He was unconscious. Clancy stumbled down the stairs. He and Bridie turned Matt onto his back. A trickle of blood ran from his nose. A lump as big as a chicken's egg was rising on his forehead. "Mary, Jaysus and Joseph," Bridie whispered. No bones were broken, Clancy ascertained that by running his hands gently over Matt's body.
But Matt was still unconscious five minutes later, despite the wet towel Bridie pressed to his head, and still unconscious ten whole minutes after that. Clancy was outside, checking that Flynn and Casey were burying the arms. Bridie squatted at the foot of the stairs bathing Matt's temple. She worked a pillow beneath his neck, but was afraid to do more ...
Then Matt groaned and his eyes flickered.
Bridie cried out with relief, "Thanks be to God. Just you stay still a minute, you hear me, that was a monstrous fall."
Clancy hurried in through the kitchen door. He dropped down and grabbed Matt's hand. "Jaysus Matt, you gave us a fright. Rest yourself there a minute. We'll move you upstairs -"
"Clancy?" Matt groaned and stared up at them. "Is that yourself, Clancy?"
"An' who else would it be - even though you fair brained me with that box of-"
"Clancy?" Matt squinted at the two faces bent over him, then raised a hand to rub his eyes.
"Don't," Bridie said quickly, reachi
ng for him, "don't touch your head. You'll be hurting yourself -"
"I can't see you properly," Matt whispered. "Dear God, I can't see!"
The next hour was a nightmare. Clancy ripped up a shirt and bandaged Matt's head, not knowing if it was the right or the wrong thing to do. Matt's head was not cut, but the bump on his temple was awesome. The most frightening though was Matt's vision - his impaired vision. He saw two and three of everything, all blurred together. No outline was clear, nothing was clear, all was distorted. When he tried to walk he stretched out his hands like a blind man. "Dear God," he kept sobbing, "I can't see, I can't see "
Life seemed to turn sour for everyone from that September. For instance, only a few days after Matt's accident at Lymington Sean Connors was along the coast at Southampton to greet Margaret Mallon when she docked on board the Maid of Orleans.
Margaret had missed London painfully. When Freddie had been in New York life was different, but with him away in Germany she had yearned for her family and friends. So when she arrived in Southampton few passengers aboard the Maid of Orleans were as excited as Margaret. Sean was hugged and kissed for ten solid minutes. Then he was introduced to young George Mallon and the baby - after which it was all hustle and bustle to get Margaret's trunks organised and onto the London train.
Once in town Sean took Margaret to Craven Street where the house had been cleaned from top to bottom in her honour. Sean had arranged to move out and stay with a friend for the duration of Margaret's visit.
"Oh that's absurd," she protested. "Sean, it's your home."
But he was adamant. "Freddie will be back from Germany in a few weeks. You'll want the place to yourselves."
She had no need to ask if Sean's accommodating friend was male all of Sean's friends were - there had been no woman in Sean's life since Val. It saddened Margaret. Four years was too long to mourn, and while he was not exactly in mourning he had lost his lightheartedness. It was something Margaret planned to change, now she was back in London.
Sean spent an hour or so settling her info Craven Street, and then he left. She kissed him at the door and reminded him of his promise to call early in the morning for her surprise visit to the Dorchester - after which he walked off into the night, making for Tubby's place at Rutland Gate.
Ian St James Compendium - Volume 1 Page 135