by Sara Seale
“Did you ever want to get married?”
“No.”
“Have you ever been in love?”
“No.”
“Then how can you know?”
He smiled.
“Probably because I’m old enough to look back and see how different my life could have been now if I hadn’t shut out every emotion but one.”
“You mean if you’d had a wife and family, they would have been compensation for the loss of your career.”
“Well, don’t you think so?”
She flung back her head.
“No, no, you were right,” she cried. “You couldn’t know it would be taken from you.”
“You don’t know that your home may not be taken from you,” he said gently. “We none of us know, but in our arrogance we think we can keep what we hold.”
Her eyes were troubled.
“You frighten me,” she said, and he patted her shoulder. “Don’t let me do that,” he said lightly. “I was only warning you. You see, I don’t think you are like your sister. Life won’t hurt Kathy, but it could hurt you. What a very solemn conversation. How about lunch?”
“How old are you?” she asked while she unpacked the sandwiches.
“Thirty-four.”
“As much as that?”
“Does that sound so old?”
“No. It’s just—well, it’s a long time to have lived for one thing and then lose it. Look, these are chicken, and those are sardine. There are some hard-boiled eggs, too.” Kathy would have talked about the tragedy of such a loss to the world of, music, gazing at him with her blue eyes soft with pity. Kathy made him acutely conscious of his loss, but with Sarah he could forget it.
“You’ve forgotten the salt again,” he said, and she laughed and reached across him for a hard-boiled egg.
They sat in companionable silence when they had finished, while Adrian smoked his pipe and watched a boat like a toy put out from the north shore of the lough.
He sniffed the strong mountain air, aware for the first time for months that the sickness of mind might be passing.
He had done well to stay, he thought. He would do well to stay until he could see clearly what he must do with the rest of his life.
“Tell me the story of Cuchulain,” he said lazily, and she rolled over on to her stomach and began at once.
“Cuchulain was the son of Conchubar, King of Ulster, and his father’s court was in Emain Macha...”
He listened contentedly, his quick ear picking up the cadences of her voice which became more softly Irish, as she described the bold deeds of Her country’s legendary hero. Sometimes he watched her face, vivid one moment, sad the next. She was a born story-teller, he thought, and the sun was sinking behind Slieve Rury before she finished.
“We’d better pack,” she said, scrambling to her feet, “or we won’t be home before it’s dark.”
“It’s very interesting,” Adrian said, stuffing paper bags back into the satchels. “It has certain features in common with the Nibelung saga—Siegfried and your Cuchulain are conceived on the same scale. Their journeys and exploits, the queer mixture of bloody deeds and magic. Have you ever heard ‘Siegfried’s Journey to the Rhine’ from the last of Wagner’s Ring cycle?”
“I don’t think so. But I know nothing about music, as I’ve told you.”
“I think you might know a great deal that can’t be taught,” he said. “You’d like the Journey to the Rhine. I’ll play you a record of it when we get home.”
Nonie had just brought in the tea when they got back and an inviting smell of hot potato-cake proceeded from the snug to greet them.
‘Break your rule for once, Mr. Flint, and come and have some tea. Or shall I bring it up to the nursery for you?”
Strangely enough he did not want to go back to the solitude of the nursery yet.
“Still keeping me at a distance?” he said.
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, don’t I rate a Christian name? Your sister uses it.”
“Oh! Well, you didn’t tell me I could. And, anyhow, it seems rather familiar from one’s landlady.”
He gave her hair a tweak.
“So much for the landlady!”
Sarah giggled.
“Miss Dearlove called you Flint-by-name-and flint-by-nature. It became quite a saying.”
“Did it indeed? I think I prefer Adrian.”
Relaxed by the snug fire, eating Nonie’s potato-cakes dripping with butter, he thought of his own boyhood in the big house in Wiltshire. This is what he had missed, he thought, the warmth of a family circle, the small interchange of family talk. He remembered his mother, elegant and bored behind her array of silver, dispensing tea to a husband who was only looking forward to his own study and the hour before dinner when he could drowse and forget his responsibilities. The talk had been desultory, with himself as an unwanted third, handing tea cups, and wishing, like his father, to get away to the solitude of his own room.
He watched the young Riordans and thought how different they were. They all talked at once, eating potato-cake while the butter dripped down their chins and Aunt Em smiled and nodded in her corner. Danny had school news to impart, Sarah plied everyone with questions and Kathy, behind the teapot, was charming and attentive and full of tomorrow’s dance.
“The frock’s finished,” she said, her cheeks flushed with achievement, and Sarah said:
“Go and put it on, I’m dying to see you in it, and Mr. Flint—I mean Adrian—can give you his valued opinion.”
“Shall I?” said Kathy. She was obviously longing to show off her handiwork, and presently she went away and came back in a little while, holding out the wide blue net skirt of her new frock for them to admire.
“Oh, Kathy, it’s lovely,” Sarah said. “Turn round. I like that strapless top. How did you do it?”
“It took me hours sewing in all the little bones,” Kathy said.
Nonie came in to clear the tea and gave it as her opinion that the frock was indecent.”
“Showing your bosom like that, Miss Kathy, an’ the gentlemen lookin’ at you with sheep’s eyes.”
“Dear Nonie, it’s the fashion; isn’t it, Adrian?” Kathy said, and he smiled and assured Nonie that the dress was perfectly correct.
“Well—” Nonie went away, grumbling. “I don’t know what Mr. Joe will say, but you look a picture I’ll not be denying.”
Sarah yawned.
“Friday. It’s accounts night,” she said. “Oh, bother, I suppose I’d better do them.”
“Do you want any help?” Adrian asked, and she grinned.
“You can add up the halfpennies for me,” she said. “I’ll bring the book up with your supper tray.”
He went back to the nursery with regret, and presently they could hear his gramophone, strident exciting music which made Kathy lift her head and listen.
“I wonder what that is,” she said, and Sarah replied: “I know.”
“That was the ‘Journey to the Rhine,’ wasn’t it?” she said to Adrian when she brought up his supper tray.
He smiled.
“You see? I told you you knew more about music than you thought.”
“Because it’s like Cuchulain,” she said. “Have you any more like that, Mr. Flint?”
“Plenty, and if you will remember to call me Adrian you can come up and listen to them.”
“You know,” she said, “you’re different already.”
“Different?”
“More human. You must go to St. Patrick’s Well again, and Cuchulain’s Keep and the Hill of the Sidhe.”
“If you’ll be my guide,” he said, and she laughed.
“When I can get away. Now, will you add up my halfpennies for me, please?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
With November nearing its close the Riordans began planning for Christmas. Christmas at Dun Rury was always the same, with the Kavanaghs coming to dinner, and sometimes staying the night, but Sarah
said it was nice to make plans even if they were the same, and this year there would be Adrian. Presents were discussed, lists made out and Nonie made her Christmas puddings—two for the house; one for Mrs. Donovan, one for Paddy-the-Sheep, and one for the Mulligan family who lived with their large brood of children down the glen. Everyone had to stir and make a wish. Nolan and the garden boy came in from outside, and Willie-the-Post had happened to call with the mail, and even Adrian was summoned from the nursery to do his share.
In those brief moments she would feel both sheltered and expectant. The family was uniting again. Presently Nonie would bring the lamps, and Aunt Em would make one of her vague appearances, setting a seal on the domestic circle. She would turn to them gratefully, warm in their fondness for her, happy in their innocent admiration. The house might be Sarah’s, but she was still Miss Riordan of Dun Rury.
They all lingered in the big kitchen drinking tea, while Sarah dipped her fingers into the mixing bowl, eating lumps of dough when Nonie’s back was turned.
“And on New Year’s Eve,” Kathy was saying excitedly, “there’s a dance in Knockferry. Joe wants us all to go. Do come, Sarah, you never have any fun.”
“It’s not my idea of fun,” said Sarah. “Besides, I’ve nothing to wear.”
“More shame on you then, and you with the light feet for dancing,” said Nonie. “Never before has the young ladies of Dun Rury thought trousers good enough to, wear for every occasion.”
“Oh, Nonie, I always change in the evening.”
“An’ so I should hope, with gentlemen present. Take your hands out of that bowl, Miss Sarah, an’ me with all me hard work preparin’ the puddin’s.” She rapped Sarah across the knuckles with a kitchen spoon and Kathy said: “Do come, Sarah. You can have one of my dresses.”
“And who will I have for a partner?” demanded Sarah crossly. “Tom Blake or one of the spotty Boyle brothers?”
“Joe will find someone.” Kathy caught Adrian’s amused expression, and said a little breathlessly: “I suppose you wouldn’t—I mean it would be wonderful if you felt—”
“I have no dress clothes with me,” he replied, and Sarah said quickly:
“Of course not, Kathy, and I don’t want to go.”
“I could always send for them,” Adrian said.
“What?”
“My dress clothes.”
Kathy gave a little squeal of pleasure.
“Oh, Adrian, you dear! That will make the evening quite perfect.”
Sarah gave him a long look, a little puzzled, a little hostile. “Well, darling, you can have two strings to your bow,” she told her sister. “I’m not going.”
“An’ for the like of that for rudeness I’ll not be knowin’,” Nonie declared. “What’s come to you, Miss Sarah, that you turn sour on the poor gentleman and his doin’ his best to please you both?”
“I haven’t turned sour on him,” Sarah answered, snatching another surreptitious taste from the bowl. “I just don’t want to go. It won’t spoil Kathy’s party. You know I don’t care about these things.”
Nonie looked at her with her nursery expression, then she looked at Kathy, and then at Adrian. She nodded her head.
“Ah, well, maybe the gentleman will persuade you when the time comes,” she said mildly.
Joe spent the following weekend with them. The weather had cleared, and on Saturday Sarah said:
“Let’s go to Cuchulain’s Keep. Adrian hasn’t been there yet, and there’ll be a fine wind on the mountain today.”
Joe noticed with surprise how promptly Kathy agreed. She was lazy about picnics as a rule, and picnics in winter she had always declared to be folly.
“We’ll take the car as fax as Mrs. Donovan’s and walk the rest. The boreens will be too waterlogged for the donkey cart, now,” Sarah said, and they set off in the morning with lunch baskets—Adrian in the front seat beside Sarah, and Danny squeezed between Joe and Kathy in the back.
“This is where we’d been the day you arrived,” Sarah told him. “The cart turned over and the ass broke loose, and Miss Dearlove insulted Mrs. Donovan on the way home. It rained, a, lot, too.”
Adrian was vividly reminded of his first meeting with Sarah, wet and bedraggled, saying with her nose in the air: “I am Sarah Riordan. Dun Rury is my house and I think at least you might get up when you speak to me.”
“Not perhaps an encouraging prelude to welcoming an unexpected guest,” he remarked, with a smile.
“No,” she replied, with her usual frankness. “You were the last straw, especially—”
“Especially what?”
“Nothing. I forgive my enemies.”
“You absurd child! Something still rankles, doesn’t it? Are you coming to the dance?”
“What dance?”
“You know very well.”
“I am not.”
“Pity,” he said with polite acceptance. “I should like to have danced with you.”
She turned her head to give him a quick, suspicious look, and nearly went off the road.
“By the holy saints, will you watch what you’re doing!” shouted Joe from the back. “I taught you to drive the contraption but the divil a bit of attention have you paid me.”
“You did not, then,” retorted Sarah over her, shoulder. “You showed me how the gadgets worked and after that didn’t I teach myself practising every day and having to go right round the lough and I not able to reverse?”
“And you’ve learnt no more than that, my poor girl.”
“Well, that’s better than Kathy who won’t learn at all. This car’s dropping to bits. Did you ever hear anything like the noise it makes?”
“It might be better,” said Adrian mildly, “if you changed out of bottom gear.”
They left the car at Mrs. Donovan’s and turned into the boreen. Danny and the two men carried the lunch, and the girls dawdled behind, their arms entwined, embarking suddenly on one of their spasmodic reminiscences.
“Do you remember when Nonie ...”
“Do you remember how Father ...”
Do you remember ... that nostalgic phrase conjuring up so many things shared, so much that was trivial and precious. Only children missed a great deal, Adrian thought, and was almost relieved when Sarah suddenly broke away and ran on ahead of them, jumping the puddles.
Kathy did the honors for Cuchulain’s Keep. She stood beside Adrian, pointing out landmarks as Sarah had done for Miss Dearlove.
“The mountains are beautiful, aren’t they?” she said, slipping a hand through his arm. “Especially Slieve Rury. It always makes me think of ‘Up the airy mountain, down the rushy glen’—you know.”
“ ‘We daren’t go a’hunting for fear of little men,’ ” he followed on.
“Even I knew that one,” Joe said, and started unpacking the lunch.
“How does it go on? ‘They stole little Bridget’?”
“That’s further on. ‘They stole little Bridget for seven years long ...’ ” Kathy said. “Don’t you remember? They brought her back but it was too late.”
‘They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lake,
On a bed of flag-leaves
Watching till she wake.’
“ ‘Watching till she wake...’ ” murmured Adrian, his eyes on Sarah leaning from the broken tower in the wind, her dreaming gaze seeking out Dun Rury.
They are their lunch in the shelter of the tower, and Adrian listened lazily while the Riordans continued their plans for Christmas. This led inevitably to reminiscences of other years.
“Do you remember, Joe, when Nolan got drunk and you had to put him to bed?”
“Do you remember when the tree caught fire?”
“Do you remember the surprise hampers Father used to order from Dublin?”
Kathy described for Adrian the country custom of placing a lighted candle in the window on Christmas Eve to invite the Christ-child in should He be passing.
“We always had one i
n the nursery,” she said. “I’ll light one for you this year, Adrian.”
“What a charming custom,” he said gently.
“One year a child did come,” Sarah said, her eyes bright with remembrance. “It was only one of the Mulligan children, really, but he stood in the snow with the lamplight shining on his hair, knocking at the window. Do you remember, Kathy?”
“I remember you brought him indoors and he ate a whole box of chocolates and was sick as a dog,” Joe observed with a grin, and Kathy frowned at him.
“But that didn’t spoil the moment,” she said a little sharply. “Of course we brought him in. It was good luck on the house.”
Sarah looked at her a little strangely.
“Good luck?” she said. “Have you forgotten it was the year Father died? It’s cold sitting still. I’m going higher up the mountain. Coming, Joe?”
But Joe seemed a little cross, and stayed where he was, bringing out a pipe, and Sarah went off alone. Presently they could hear her singing.
“ ‘As I walked down through Dublin city ...’ ”
The wind took the words and carried them away, and Kathy began to tell Adrian the legend of Cuchulain’s Keep.
He listened absently, seeing for a moment with Sarah’s eyes the child standing in the snow, a halo of light about his head. Kathy’s gentle voice beside him did not distract him from his thoughts. She was not as good a storyteller as her sister, and after a little her voice trailed away as she became aware of his inattention.
“Well,” Joe said, “Sarah’s right. It’s too cold for sitting about. We’d better pack up.” He shouted up the mountainside to Sarah and began packing up the lunch basket.
Sarah came sliding down the mountain path above them, shouting:
“I think I saw an eagle’s eyrie.”
“Nonsense,” Joe said. “There are no eagles here.”
“There have been. Well, hawks, anyway.” She came and stood beside Adrian, following the direction of his gaze.
“They say Cuchulain brought his warriors down this glen. I can see him riding the Grey of Macha, loved by three times fifty queens.”
His eyes rested on her clear profile. She was bracing herself against the wind which blew the black hair back from her face like a pennant, and he had the fleeting impression of a ship’s figure-head, strong and proud with the strange timelessness of the centuries.