“Much too upsetting for the boys,” said Marguerite. “That dreadful long sea voyage, all those thousands of miles—no, it would be much better for us to stay here for the extra months.”
“I suppose it would, yes. But don’t you think this hot weather is unhealthy for children?”
“We’ll be going upstate next week to Francis’ house in the Hudson Valley. Oh, you’ll love our house on the river, Patrick! I know you don’t like cities, but you’ll feel so much better in the country. And later on … well, there’s no need for you to stay in New York all the time, is there? You should really take advantage of being on this side of the Atlantic and see as much of America as possible. Yes, that’s it! You can take a tour, just like Mr. Trollope did, although I shouldn’t go to the South, as they say it’s still a wasteland from the war. But Francis has friends in Boston and Washington and Philadelphia, and of course you must see the Great Lakes—perhaps Chicago …”
American women can indeed be very managing sometimes. I began to wonder if there was more truth in Derry’s letter than I’d dared to admit.
“But what on earth am I going to tell Derry?” I said, embarrassed as usual by my good fortune. It seemed so unfair that I should be idling away my time touring America while Derry was slaving away in some poky legal chambers in Dublin with no prospect on the horizon but a solitary Christmas at his lodgings.
“Tell Derry you can’t bear to leave Sarah, of course,” said Marguerite, giving me a look that plainly told me I was being unintelligent. “What else do you need to say?”
That was a good question. I spent several hours trying to think of the answer, and in the end I became convinced that if I could only compensate him in some way for my absence both he and my conscience would be appeased.
“Dear Derry,” I wrote carefully at last. “I’ve got myself into a tricky position here and don’t see how I can return to Woodhammer for Christmas—or indeed at any time between now and my wedding day. I’ve tried to press for an earlier wedding date, but apparently it takes them months to get ready, and anyway Cousin Francis is playing the clinging papa and insisting on a year’s engagement. However, since it seems I’ve no choice but to reconcile myself to a long absence from home, I wonder if you would accept an important commission from me. Could I engage you in your professional capacity and ask you to keep an eye on affairs at Cashelmara? I don’t have to worry about Woodhammer because Mason is such a good steward, but you know how matters slide downhill at Cashelmara if no one visits the place at regular intervals. If you could keep an eye on the servants and see they don’t spend all their time drinking poteen and having faction fights, I’d be awfully grateful.
“By the way, I heard from Annabel this morning. Clara and Edith are actually staying with her at Clonagh Court now. Those stiff-necked old grandparents of theirs finally expired within a month of each other at their ghastly morgue in Northumberland, so they can’t keep the girls from Annabel any more. As I’m their nearest male relative the Court of Chancery has appointed me their guardian, which is rather jolly, and as soon as the family attorney wrote to tell me so I asked Annabel to liberate the girls from Northumberland. Annabel already had, as it turned out, but I’m sure she has no idea what to do with two nubile daughters, so why don’t you call with some suggestions? Clara told me once she thought you were a terrific Heavy Swell, and since Annabel thinks pretty well of you too you may have some luck with an heiress at last! Good hunting anyway. Yours, etc. PATRICK.”
“Dear Patrick,” Derry wrote back promptly in reply, “why you should want to consign me to a fate worse than death (becoming Maxwell Drummond’s neighbor again) I can’t think, but since I am, God help me, a native of that part of the world, and since I’m bloody sick of working like a dog in damp dark chambers for a pittance and since I’m pretty well fed up with life at the moment (why the hell can’t you come home and we can have some fun?) … well, to cut a long list of grievances short, yes, I’ll take your wretched commission if you’ll pay me one hundred pounds a month (a man can’t live a decent life on less than a thousand a year, and we both know that) and give me a power of attorney so that I can deal with your affairs properly. You’re a great deal too trusting with that Scots bastard MacGowan, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was robbing you right and left. Look how he leased my father’s old lands to that devil Drummond for twenty pounds a year! I remember very well your father saying he wanted Drummond to have the land for a nominal rent, so where do you think those twenty pounds went? Not into your father’s pocket, you can be sure of that. Those Scots are all alike. They can never bear to part with money—either their own or anyone else’s. Cursed Black Protestants the lot of them.
“Dear God, what fun it’ll be to set foot in Clonareen again and start discussing the merits of celibacy once more with Father Donal! Make sure you write at once to your London lawyers so that I can have my power of attorney as soon as possible, and then I’ll take care of Cashelmara as well as if it were my very own. Yours, etc. DERRY.
“P.S. Good news about Clara. What sort of income has she got, do you know? I suppose she can do pretty much as she likes with it when she marries. Maybe if all goes well I’ll be spending my Christmas at Clonagh Court! Are you sure you can’t come home and join us?”
But I didn’t go home. I remained in America with Sarah, and it was to be many months before I saw Derry again.
IV
I dreamed about Sarah that night. I dreamed that she was riding down the road to Clonareen, the road that followed the shore of the lough amidst the blazing yellow of the gorse. She rode a white horse and wore a black riding habit, and in her left hand she carried a long curling riding whip. She rode slowly past the stone-walled fields on the hillside above her, but when she reached the ruined cabin which had once been Derry’s home she left the road and guided her horse up the deserted bohereen to the front door.
Derry walked from the ruins to meet her, his hands outstretched in greeting.
I was watching from behind one of the walls, just as I always did, and as I peered through the familiar crack in the crumbling stonework I saw that she was facing him amidst the weeds which had long since pushed their way through the earthen floor.
Sarah laid aside her riding whip. I saw Derry help her as she began to discard her clothes, but she wore nothing beneath her habit but a shining silk petticoat with a fragile bodice. Derry began to ease the petticoat from her body; he had stepped in front of Sarah so that it was impossible for me to see her, and I could not see his face either, for he had his back to me. But I knew from the quick disdainful way he pulled off his own clothes that he was excited. He shrugged off his shirt. I saw the familiar long line of his neck, and presently as he peeled off his drawers I saw the muscles in his legs gleam as the light reflected on the strong sinews of his thighs.
He began to kiss her. Eventually he pulled her to the ground, and suddenly the earthen floor dissolved into a sparkling clover field and the sun’s hot light was streaming from a blistering sky. His hands moved over her flesh. I saw his body molding itself into hers until her breath was coming in great harsh gasps for air. I saw her mouth gape wider, her back arch, and then without warning the earth moved and I was falling endlessly into a bottomless pit.
I woke up.
I awoke so violently that at first I couldn’t remember where I was or who I was or what the devil I’d been doing. A second later when I realized I’d been dreaming I was able to sink back thankfully on the pillows, but my heart was thudding like a piston and I felt as wet as a drowned dog. Presently I lighted a candle and sponged my limbs with cold water from the ewer. My hands were unsteady. I kept thinking to myself, What a damnable, damnable dream, and I wished I had a small glass of poteen at hand to smooth the memory from my mind.
Well, it was only a dream, and when I awoke next morning I could even smile at its absurdity and wonder why on earth I should have been so upset. Dreams never mean anything, everyone knows that nowadays, and I certain
ly wasn’t superstitious enough to believe I had been dreaming of the future. In retrospect the most tiresome part of the dream was that I could barely remember Sarah’s part in it, only Derry’s, but dreams are notoriously illogical.
Pushing all thought of the dream resolutely from my mind, I turned with relief to Sarah, who as usual was talking about our distant wedding.
“Papa says,” she was remarking dreamily, “that he’s going to give me the very finest wedding that money can buy.”
I can never understand why Americans are so fearfully interested in money. I’m not in the least interested in it myself and think it’s an awfully boring topic of conversation.
“Tell me more about London,” Sarah was begging for the umpteenth time. “How many dry-goods stores are there? I like to go shopping. Is there a store as fine as Lord and Taylor or as vast as Stewart’s?”
Americans have this curious notion that one should be able to purchase everything under one roof and therefore the bigger the shop the better. They set great importance on size and are continually talking about how big things are.
“Can I have as many gowns as I like? I never wear the same ball gown twice, you know. Papa says my dress bills are positively ruinous.”
The cost of the wedding was going to be positively ruinous too, but no one seemed to care about that. The guest list reached five hundred with no end in sight, and so many wedding presents streamed into the house that I thought I would have to engage a fleet of ships to transport them across the Atlantic.
“I like weddings,” said my little brother David, who had never been to a wedding but was already an incurable romantic. “People wear nice clothes and there’s organ music and singing. Nanny told me all about it.”
Thomas looked at him pityingly before tugging at Marguerite’s sleeve. He tugged at Marguerite’s sleeve very often and usually when she was smiling at David. “Mama …”
“Yes, darling?”
“When are we going back to England?”
“After the wedding.”
After the wedding. It was like some date so remote that I would never live to see it. Meanwhile Marguerite had arranged a series of short visits for me, and I found myself traveling by train first to Boston, then to Philadelphia and finally to Washington. I liked Philadelphia best; the Schuylkill Valley is so pretty, and above the city the river is just like an English river, lazy, winding and not too wide. I did not care for the Hudson, which Sarah admired so much, because it was so un-English in its width and surrounding rocky heights. It reminded me of my visit to the Rhine during my Grand Tour, and I always felt lukewarm toward anything German after Derry had been banished to Frankfurt.
I disliked Washington (there’s something so depressing about a town that is being painstakingly created instead of being allowed to evolve naturally) and thought the atmosphere of the place was as dispiriting as the endless unfinished streets stretching into the marshy wilderness; but Boston had much more warmth of personality, and I took a great fancy to the little villages of New England with their green-shuttered, white-walled wooden houses.
“Isn’t America wonderful?” said Sarah enthusiastically after I had returned from my last journey and was reflecting on my travels.
“Very remarkable,” I said at once, having discovered by this time that Americans have to be constantly reassured what a fine country they have, but to be honest I didn’t think the scenery could hold a candle to the sights I had seen either in England or in Europe.
“Do you think New England is like Old England?” asked Sarah, eager for my impressions.
“Well, not really,” I said “although it’s quite delightful, of course.”
“But in what way is it different?”
“Well, England—Old England—is rather more ‘lived in,’ if you know what I mean.”
She had no idea what I meant, and finally I gave up trying to explain. “After all,” I said, “you’ll see it soon enough for yourself. After the wedding.”
But that was still a long way off.
Then suddenly it wasn’t such a long way off after all. It was next month, next week, tomorrow, until finally, still hardly able to believe my amazing good fortune, I walked down the aisle of St. Thomas’s Church with Sarah and stepped out into the brilliant sunshine of that June afternoon. The crowd cheered and threw rice. The champagne flowed like water at the Marriott mansion on Fifth Avenue, and seven hundred and fifty guests gathered to wish us well.
No marriage could have had a more auspicious beginning.
V
I admit I was a little apprehensive about the honeymoon. It was not that I was inexperienced, but to be quite honest I’ve always thought that sexual intercourse is a very overrated sport, not nearly so much fun as carving or drawing or even splashing watercolors on an inviting blank page of a sketchbook. However, a man can’t very well say—even to his best friend—that he’d rather chisel a piece of wood than bump a piece of flesh, and God knows I had no wish to be different from anyone else. I was different enough already with all my advantages, and the least I could do was behave like an average man whenever I had the opportunity.
Anyway, it wasn’t so hard to conform. In fact I often think I liked women a great deal better than Derry did, for he was always cursing them for some reason or moaning about his need to go to bed with them so often. One day I even said to him, “Why do you chase women so if you dislike them so much?” But he got very annoyed at this and said no one liked a piece of skirt more than he did, and what the devil did I mean anyway? “I’m a man, aren’t I?” he added truculently, and when I laughed and said there was no denying that he thawed a little and said he liked women well enough but they were deuced irritating creatures when all was said and done and as far as he was concerned they were good for one thing and one thing only.
“Well, you certainly practice what you preach,” I said hastily. “There’s no doubt about that.”
It was Derry’s misfortune that he lived in a country where chastity is rated very highly, but even in the rigidly moral Catholic climate of Connaught there was always the impulsive maiden who could be talked out of waiting for a wedding ring or the lonely widow who was secretly pining for consolation. Derry was so acute he could spot a woman’s willingness at fifty paces, even if her face were veiled, and although I was at first horrified by the risks he ran my admiration for his nerve finally overcame my horror.
In the beginning I was too young to join him in these exploits (I was three years his junior), but Derry was generous and usually let me watch. The first seduction I witnessed appalled me, but after Derry had sworn the woman had enjoyed it I became less squeamish. In fact I would have been quite happy to prolong my role of observer indefinitely, but at last I realized Derry would think it odd if I continued to enjoy women in this secondhand way, and when one day he invited me to join him I hadn’t enough nerve to refuse. To my relief I soon found out that there’s no truth in the maxim “Two’s company but three’s a crowd,” and later I did try an exploit or two on my own. However these proved such nerve-wracking affairs that if I hadn’t dosed myself liberally with poteen beforehand I might have turned tail and fled. I’m really very shy, you see, although no one ever believes that because I’m six feet two and look as if I ought to be as brave as a lion. It was only when I was with Derry that I forgot to feel shy. He gave me such confidence and—well, it’s hard to explain, but I was always quite a different person when I was with Derry Stranahan.
But Derry wasn’t going to be with me on my honeymoon.
I didn’t intend to drink so much at the wedding breakfast, but champagne is such a deuced dangerous drink and those flunkeys kept filling up one’s glass when one wasn’t looking, and before I knew where I was I felt I just wanted to lie down in some quiet corner and go to sleep. However, I managed to keep my eyes open, and finally after numerous delays we left the reception and were driven across the town to the Hudson, where we boarded Cousin Francis’ yacht. We then sailed all the way
up the river to his country house, where we were to spend the first two weeks of our honeymoon, and by the time we crossed the threshold it was after dark and I had already made a vow never to touch champagne again. Mumbling an excuse to Sarah, I sank down on the dressing-room couch and drifted thankfully into oblivion.
When I managed to open my eyes it was seven o’clock in the morning, my head felt as if it had been split by a blunderbuss and there was no sign of Sarah.
I crawled off the couch. I was still fully dressed; evidently my man had been too tactful to disturb me. I stared numbly at my surroundings. Beyond the window a meticulously watered lawn stretched like a carpet to the glassy waters of the Hudson and across the river the humps of thickly wooded hills towered gloomily toward the cloudless sky. It already felt too hot, and I had a useless aching moment of longing for Woodhammer Hall.
I wondered if the water in the washstand pitcher was safe to drink. My tongue felt as if it were coming apart at the seams. After peering around for the bell rope I decided that if I waited an instant longer to assuage my thirst my tongue would certainly drop out, so I scooped up some water and drank. I felt better. I drank some more and then, summoning my courage, I tiptoed to the door that led into the main bedroom, listened carefully to the silence on the other side and reached out to turn the handle.
But the door opened before I could touch it. A second later Sarah was facing me across the threshold.
She was wearing a long white night dress buttoned up to the neck, and there were violet shadows under her eyes.
We looked at each other guiltily. It took me a moment to realize she was feeling just as guilty as I was.
“Patrick …” She rushed forward, flung her arms around my neck and burst into tears. “Oh, Patrick, forgive me. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean to drink more than one tiny glass of champagne, but …”
Cashelmara Page 26