by Sara Seale
“I see. Further applicants for home comforts?”
He was laughing at her, and she adopted what was known in the family now as her landlady’s face.
“I’m sorry if we haven’t made you comfortable,” she said, and his eyebrows went up.
“I haven’t said so, have I? Why are you so prickly?”
“I don’t know,” she said, becoming herself again. “There must be something about you. I do fly into rages sometimes, but I’m not usually scratchy with people.”
He observed her reflectively, and suddenly smiled.
“I expect it’s my fault,” he said. “I’m not a very easy person these days.”
Kathy, knowing a little of his circumstances, would have seized the opening and shyly made excuses for him, but Sarah only said:
“It will be better when you go back to work again.”
“Work? You think I’ve been neglecting it of late?”
“Oh, I don’t mean that”—she gestured impatiently towards the typewriter. “That’s only a stop-gap, isn’t it? It’s not really important. I meant it will be better when you get back to your profession.”
For a moment his lids veiled his eyes, and the strong muscles round his mouth tightened as if he resented her intrusion, but he only said:
“Yes. I didn’t know your sister sang.”
“Kathy? She can’t sing a note.”
“But I heard her the other evening. She was singing The Spanish Lady. You all joined in at the end.”
“Oh,” she said with a gay little upward inflexion, “that wasn’t Kathy, it was me.”
He looked surprised, then smiled. He might have guessed that the voice did not match the hands.
“How was it you told me you had no talents?”
Her mouth tilted up at the corners.
“Is that a talent? Anyone can sing traditional songs. You should hear Casey when he’s drink taken, and Finnigan-the-Fish has a fine tenor voice. I know nothing about the music you and Kathy understand.” She became suddenly prim again. “I hope we don’t disturb you when we make a noise in the snug.”
“Not at all,” he said politely.
“Well, you’d better eat your supper, it’ll be cold.” She scanned the tray, exclaimed violently: “Golly! The pepper and salt!” and leapt towards the door.
“Never mind,” he laughed. “I can manage without.” But she was back again in a few minutes with the pepper and salt and a pair of his shoes which Danny had forgotten.
“My dear Sarah!” he protested, then stopped and added humorously: “My dear Miss Riordan...”
She grinned.
“You’d much better call us all by our Christian names, like Miss Dearlove does. So many Riordans are confusing.”
“I couldn’t possibly address my landlady so informally,” he replied gravely.
“Couldn’t you?”
“Well—it might depend.”
“On what?”
“Shall we say on the state of our relationship? When you’re amiably disposed towards me, I shall call you Sarah, but when you’re prickly I shall address you as Miss Riordan which is only fitting.”
“Oh! And what do I call you when you’re prickly?”
“I’ve no doubt it will be the first thing that comes into your head,” he replied without a smile.
For the first time she felt she might like him.
“You know,” she said, standing on one leg like a stork, “we thought you were going to be old and doddery. Aunt Em even thought you might be bats.”
“Good gracious me, how alarming! Is that why you put me in the nursery? It was your nursery, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” She had often thought how out of place he looked with a background of nursery wallpaper. “I chose it for you because it’s sunny and has the best view. Don’t you like it?”
“Very much. I have followed Miss Muffet’s adventures with the spider with considerable interest. Sometimes she’s cut in half and runs into Little Boy Blue. Have you noticed?”
“Have you found the bit where Goldilocks’ curls are bright green? Danny did that when he was little, and Nonie was furious.”
They laughed, united for a moment in the illusion of a shared childhood.
“But tell me,” he said. “Why this preconceived impression of a fretful old dodderer?”
“Well, your letters sounded elderly and crabby.”
“Did they? Yours, proffering home comforts, sounded like Miss Dearlove. I nearly didn’t come.”
“And I, when I got your reply, nearly sent you a telegram telling you not to. Only Joe restrained me.”
“You see! We both had preconceived ideas. It doesn’t do.”
“No,” said Sarah meekly. “I’m sorry if I was rude.”
“You were very rude for one who was hoping to retain a customer,” he said severely.
He had finished his supper, and she began piling plates and dishes on to the tray.
“I suppose I was,” she said. “But you have a high handed manner.”
“Have I?” He looked surprised.
“Yes, you have. I might as well take this tray with me now, then you won’t be disturbed again.”
“Very thoughtful. Suppose you let me carry it down.”
“It’s quite unnecessary,” she said. “I’m not a cripple.”
“Neither, contrary to your expectations, am I.”
He took the tray from her, and surveyed her for a moment with a quizzical expression.
“No wonder you’re so thin,” he remarked. “All this running up and down stairs.”
“I have long legs,” she informed him seriously, and opened the nursery door for him.
CHAPTER SIX
Despite Kathy’s charm, Miss Dearlove finally decided to leave Dun Rury and spend the remainder of her visit with the Miss Kellys’. She paid Adrian a visit before she left, just, as she said, to say goodbye.
“You’ve no doubt heard that I’m leaving Mr. Flint. Dear Kathy begged me to stay, but I couldn’t think of it, even for her sake. Between you and me, Mr. Flint, I think they are all a little touched.”
“Oh, do you think so?”
“But definitely. Miss Emma, delightful in her way, but, well—buying all those electric things at sales for a house that has no electricity—that can’t bespeak the normal mind, can it?”
“It wouldn’t sound like it.”
“And the little boy—such a very odd child—not rude or rough, you know—not normal. And Sarah—well, I suppose one might make excuses for her—no education, you know—but she should not be given the authority she has. So bad for a girl of that age to do just as she pleases, don’t you think? Kathy, sweet creature, is the only normal one among them.”
He raised his eyebrows politely.
“Do you think so, Miss Dearlove? I should have said it was just the opposite. The girl lives in a dream-world of her own.”
“Only the world of poetry and music. You should understand that, Mr. Flint. Will you be stopping on here, because if you are, there are one or two tiny hints I could give you which I’m sure you’d find helpful.”
“My plans are still undecided,” he said briefly. “Now, I think I hear one of them shouting for you, so I’ll say goodbye.”
“Oh—yes—perhaps I should be going. Well, goodbye, Mr. Flint. It’s been such a pleasure meeting so eminent a man as yourself. I shall certainly attend your next recital in London. Streatham is so handy for the great metropolis, you know. I will send you one of my little books when I get home—signed, of course—just a little souvenir.”
“I never,” said Adrian wearily, “read children’s, books. Goodbye, Miss Dearlove.”
She went then, bridling a little. Disagreeable to the last! Insufferable man!
Adrian could hear the sounds of departure under his open window. “A man’s voice, cheerful and careless: “What did I tell you, Miss Sarah! Thim foreigners will never stay and they destroyed by that divil of a road. Will the lady be havin’
much luggage?”
“Those three and parcels. Casey, would you be taking one of my greyhound pups as a gift?”
“Ah, I’ve dogs enough. What’s wrong with the pup that you wouldn’t be sellin’ him?”
“He has a touch of rickets, but it’s nothing. His two legs are bowed a bit, but you’ll never get finer breeding.”
“Was that the litter Mr. Blake was after destroying a while back? Och, have sense, Miss Sarah. An unsound greyhound is no good to man or beast. Drown the lot of them ... Good mornin’, ma’am, so you’re going to the Miss Kellys’? Sure, you’ll be better off there, and you with your foreign ideas an’ all. They tell me they have little tables there, now, and paper napkins to take the crumbs from your lips. Very genteel, the Miss Kellys. Will we be starting now, ma’am?”
Aunt Em’s voice murmuring farewells, Kathy’s and Miss Dearlove’s mingled in final regrets, and Sarah’s clear tones asking for a lift as far as the bridge.
“I have a taste for a day on the moors,” she said. “Mary will help Nolan milk, Aunt Em, and Kathy can take up the Flinty One’s tray.”
Adrian’s mouth twitched. He had sometimes wondered if they realized how clearly their voices could be heard from the drive and the terrace. He glanced out of the window and watched the car depart, Miss Dearlove waving stiffly from the front seat, and Sarah and the luggage and a couple of greyhounds crammed in the back.
“A day on the moors mean’s she’s upset,” said Kathy, turning to her aunt with a puzzled frown. “I would have thought she’d be celebrating. She couldn’t bear poor Daisy.”
“I think she’s worried,” her aunt replied absently. “We might not get any more answers to the fresh advertisement, and if Mr. Flint goes...” They went into the house and their voices were lost.
Sarah walked the moors and allowed her disturbed mind to wrestle again with the old fears. It seemed unlikely that Adrian would contemplate spending the winter with them in view of some of his remarks. She supposed he did not get a great deal for his extra two guineas, for the additional work he caused would, in his eyes, be well compensated by the amount he paid. If he went they would not easily replace him, and having known a month’s comparative freedom from the threat of Dun Rury, Sarah had begun to appreciate just how important security could be. She turned over in her mind whether she might manage to influence Adrian’s decision by offering to reduce her terms. If she knocked the extras off the bill, would he consider it a fairer proposition? She sighed and kicked a stone into a small stream. He did not strike her as a man who was ever embarrassed by the lack of money, but she thought he might place importance on its value, and the value of money as such had never particularly concerned her.
She fell.to scheming again. When Kathy married Joe, there would be one less to draw the sap from Dun Rury’s soil. She would fill the house with guests through the summer and by the autumn there would be a new roof for the stable, a lick of paint for the woodwork and perhaps the new kitchen range that Nonie always wanted so much. The year after that ... She laughed aloud and turned in her tracks, calling to the dogs.
She thought she would go to St. Patrick’s Well, for the sound of the water running over the stones down the mountain-side to the lough had always solaced her, and she would make a wish at the well. It was a long way back to the far end of the lough, but she was not tired. Only her temples ached a little, and when she reached the well, she dipped her whole head in the water and let it run over her, stinging and icy sweet. She stayed there resting and watching the light fade from the hills, while her mind, half hypnotized by the noisy stream, went back to small remembered moments of her childhood. Joe starting his law studies with a new suit which shrank the first time he wore it in the rain, Kathy returning from school with her pigtails cut off and a pair of high-heeled shoes that squeaked, her mother lifting her up to the mirror and bidding her be good, for she would never be pretty, and Nonie hushing her grief after her father died and saying so strangely: “You’re alone now, my doty, you’ll always be alone for it’s the way you’re made.”
The light had nearly gone and she began to scramble down the mountain-side. Her troubled spirit was released now, but there was sadness upon it, too. Nonie had been right. She loved them all, Kathy, Danny, Aunt Em, Joe, but she needed none of them. She had only needed her father—She stopped to visit old Paddy on the way home, and by the time she reached the house it was nearly nine o’clock. Supper was finished, but Nonie had left a piece of rabbit pie in the oven for her, and she carried it into the snug to eat by the fire. She thought her family seemed depressed, and enquired why they were sitting by the dim light of two candles.
“No oil,” said Kathy absently. “We had to let Mr. Flint have our lamp. His gave out.”
“Do you mean there’s no oil in the house at all?” said Sarah, frowning. “But there must be. I ordered some at the beginning of the week. It should have come yesterday.”
“Yes, dear, but Casey forgot to send it,” her aunt said. She could not see well enough to mend or darn, so she was knitting.
“Aunt Em, why didn’t you tell me? I could have fetched it this morning when I went to order the car, or Casey could have brought it.”
Her aunt looked apologetic.
“I forgot, dear. What with the upset with Miss Dearlove and everything, I clean forgot.”
Sarah sighed. It was useless to rely on Aunt Em for anything and Kathy would not notice what was missing as long as she had her books and her piano and her weekly letter from Joe.
“I’ll have to go across for it in the morning,” she said.
“You might fetch the coffee, too, and that lemon barley Mr. Flint wanted,” said Aunt Em.
“But he asked for coffee days ago. Did nothing come from Casey’s?”
“No, dear, I’m afraid not. And he’s rather annoyed about it and the lamp going out and Mary forgetting to do his room altogether in the excitement of Miss Dearlove going off. He wants to see you after breakfast tomorrow.”
Sarah pushed away the rabbit pie unfinished. She had lost her appetite.
“Oh, dear!” she said. “His month’s up tomorrow and now he’s sure to have decided to go, and I was trying to placate him this last week. How did he seem when you took up his supper, Kathy—cross?”
“He didn’t say much except to ask if you were back yet.” Kathy giggled. “He seemed rather surprised that we weren’t worried about you when you weren’t home before dark.”
“Was he?” said Sarah with amazement. “Oh, well, the English are creatures of habit. They like everything cut and dried.”
Presently, Kathy remarked that she couldn’t see to read and was going to bed, and Aunt Em rolled up her knitting and plucked Danny out of the shadows where he was hiding.
“We’ll all go,” she said. “Sarah, dear, you look tired. Come along.”
“I must go through the accounts,” Sarah replied.
“Leave it till tomorrow. You’re all eyes, child.”
“I’ve already left it for a fortnight, and tomorrow I must go to Knockferry and pay some bills and see Uncle B. about a fresh advertisement.”
“Very well.” Aunt Em knew it was useless to argue, but she touched her niece’s thin cheek with apologetic fingers as she kissed her good night. Sometimes she thought, vaguely, the child had too much on her shoulders.
When they had gone, Sarah took one of the candles and went into the kitchen. The stove was still alight and she kicked off her shoes and held first one foot and then the other to the warmth, noting absently the holes in her stockings. A cracked mirror over the mantel showed her her reflection and she stared for a moment at the thin little face which confronted her, the high, worried forehead with the fringe pushed back impatiently, the sharp cheekbones, devoid of color, and the green, unchildlike eyes.
“I’m very plain,” she remarked aloud, but without surprise. “Perhaps if my hair curled like Kathy’s...”
She viewed with distaste the fine straight hair which fell
in a gentle curve against her neck, stuck her tongue out at her reflection and turned to rummage in a dresser drawer for the ancient exercise book which held the family accounts.
She was soon lost in columns of figures which seemed to add up to an alarming sum. Sarah looked hopelessly in the tea-caddy where Aunt Em usually kept the housekeeping money but it was empty and it was only the beginning of the week. She began to add up figures, counting on her fingers and sucking her pencil. Fifteen and ninepence-half-penny to W. Doyle. What on earth was that for? Twelve into five won’t go so carry one. That made it look queer, and then there were all the halfpennies; they muddled everything up so much. Easiest to leave the halfpennies out or call them pennies, only that made it come to more.
Adrian, appearing unexpectedly in the doorway, watched her counting on her fingers, and said mildly: “Would there be any candles? My lamp’s gone out.”
She looked up distractedly.
“What did you say?” she asked vaguely.
“I came down to look for a candle. My lamp’s gone out,” he repeated, observing the smudges of weariness under her eyes. “What are you looking so harassed over?”
“It’s the accounts. I’ve got myself in such a muddle. I’m sorry about the oil, but Casey forgot to send it and no one told me. I’ll find you a candle,” she said, but she did not get up at once, but sat there staring at him, her chin propped on her hands, as if she were too tired to move.
“Isn’t it rather late for accounts?” he observed. “You look as if you could do with a good night’s sleep.”
“I keep putting it off,” she replied, “and then I forget things. How many shillings are a hundred and seven halfpennies?”
“Four and fivepence-halfpenny.”
“Goodness! Imagine knowing at once like that! Joe has to do it on paper.”
“How in the world do you get so many halfpennies?”
“They’re the accumulation of weeks,” she said. “I leave them out, you see, but some time or other there has to be an awful day of reckoning. This is it.”