However, to give credit where credit is due, I must admit that Mama suspected what no one else, least of all me, suspected—that marriage would turn out to be a rude shock for me. Mama always gave the impression of being lazy and stupid, but that was merely because she was fat. In fact she had plenty of common sense and was most industrious in her social activities, but she suffered from timidity and never quite had the strength to stand up against Papa and myself when we were at our most autocratic. But I knew she was worried about me before the wedding, because she steeled herself to talk about Unmentionable Matters, and that must have been a great ordeal for Mama, who was always the soul of propriety.
“I wish you weren’t going so far away after you’re married, dearest.” I can hear her say that now. I can still see that anxious expression in her large brown eyes. “I do wish you were to be living in New York.”
“I’ll have Marguerite with me in London,” I said impatiently, thinking she was making a great fuss about nothing. I had long since made up my mind that Patrick and I were going to live happily ever after, just as all the best people did, and I saw no need for Mama to be living within arm’s reach of my home.
“But Marguerite is only eight years older than you are,” Mama was saying, “and besides …” She and Marguerite had never been the best of friends, but of course she couldn’t say this. “… besides, there are times when a girl needs her mother.”
“Oh yes,” I said, stifling a yawn. I was very missish, thinking I knew everything. “Well, you can come and visit us in London.”
“Not for a while,” said Mama. She was so sensible always, never permitting herself any illusions. ‘Tour papa’s always so busy and anyway he dislikes Europe. In a few years, of course, we shall visit you, but then you’ll be settled and won’t need me so much.”
“Mama, I’m sure I shall manage perfectly well! I can’t see why you should be in such a fluster.”
“Well, it’s very hard for two people to live together, Sarah, and although Patrick’s so kind and gentle he may seem very unkind to you at first.” And she told me all about the Marriage Act—she spoke of it as if the initial letters were capitals—and as she spoke she became redder and redder, but she went right to the end almost without pausing for breath. Looking back, I can only admire her courage, but at the time I thought she was beastly to tell me so many horrible things, and when she had finished all I said was an insolent “Oh, I’ve known all that for years!” which was an absolute lie because, having been brought up in a gold-plated cocoon, I wouldn’t have known that men differed from women below the waist if I hadn’t seen Charles naked when we were very young. Even the classical statues in the mansions on Fifth Avenue always sported fig leaves in the right places.
I thought about the Marriage Act all the way through the wedding ceremony, and the more I thought of it the more convinced I became that I would like it—just to spite Mama, who had made it all seem so revolting. In fact by the time I left the church with Patrick I was very cheerful and had decided that the Marriage Act couldn’t truly be so great an ordeal or no couple could possibly hope to live happily ever after.
I remember feeling angry with Mama for frightening me so much, and when the time came for me to leave the wedding breakfast my farewell kiss to her was cool.
Poor Papa was dreadfully affected by my leaving and wept, which upset me very much. I even began to wonder whether he was crying at the thought of me submitting to the Marriage Act, and that made me feel nervous again so that I resented his distress.
So by the time we reached Papa’s summer mansion where Patrick and I were to spend the first weeks of our honeymoon, I felt both angry and resentful; I didn’t even feel in the mood to kiss Patrick, and yet when he was too drunk to do more than sleep through the wedding night I felt just as angry with him as I had felt with Papa and Mama. Indeed when I look back the emotion I remember best from my entire married life is that anger which began on my wedding day, that dull, smoldering resentment I could neither explain nor understand, the feeling that somehow, somewhere along the way, I had been cheated and short-changed. Often I was unaware of the anger; sometimes it would erupt during a quarrel, but usually it was dormant, a small core of discontent ceaselessly eroding the walls of my elegant, gold-plated cocoon.
Needless to say, the Marriage Act was just as awful as Mama had warned me, only worse. At first I couldn’t think how I was ever going to endure it, but fortunately Patrick seemed no more anxious for intimacy than I was, and so the Marriage Act became a monthly chore which we steeled ourselves to face because we both wanted children.
I am uncertain how long it was before I found out that not all women thought as I did. It was before we started mingling with the Marlborough House set, because I can remember that by then I barely raised an eyebrow at their activities. Perhaps my enlightenment came when we first, settled in London and I met some young English wives who liked to gossip about other people’s adulteries. I was very shocked to think such wickedness existed, for I had been protected from the New York decadence, and when I arrived in England in the late Sixties society was so arranged that immorality among the upper classes was heavily swathed in discretion. It was true that the Prince of Wales had already embarked on the career that was to make his set the fastest in Europe, but nonetheless the sobriety of the Queen and her court dominated the national morality so that at first I did not realize there was often a considerable gap between what many people said and what they actually did.
Of course I had instinctively known that no “good” woman could truly enjoy the Marriage Act. But it came as a shock to me to discover not only that some apparently “good” women chose to live like courtesans but that genuinely “good” women either didn’t mind the Marriage Act or else merely thought it “a bit of a bore.”
That was when I first realized that there might be something wrong with me. Long before Patrick said to me in a rage that I was as sexless as a unicorn and an utter failure as a wife, I was as ashamed of my abnormality as a cripple would be ashamed of a deformity. My only consolation lay in the fact that no one knew about it except Patrick and Marguerite—and I was quite determined that no one else except those two people would ever know. This precluded all possible love affairs, and although I often met attractive men, the thought of watching their admiration turn to disillusioned disgust was so chilling that I had no difficulty in behaving coldly whenever the occasion demanded.
It never occurred to me that there might be other women who found it as hard as I did to be a dutiful wife. It never occurred to me that because no one boasts of failure there might be other women who concealed their troubles just as fanatically as I did. Thinking myself quite alone, I simply bore my cross as best as I could—and that wasn’t easy, especially during my worst quarrels with Patrick. Everyone, even Marguerite, thought Patrick was kind and gentle twenty-four hours a day, but there was a darker side to his nature, particularly when he was drunk, and at such times he had a very violent temper and a very cruel tongue.
“You’re such a damned hypocrite, Sarah!” I remember him saying once. “You beckon a man on and then when he’s eager for you you turn into a lump of ice. There’s a very vulgar word which describes a woman like you, but knowing your horror of vulgar language, I’ll save it until you try to seduce me with kisses and then fly into hysterics as soon as I lift your skirt. Knowing you, I doubt if I’ll have long to wait.”
“Knowing you,” I said, “and your reluctance to lift my skirt I’m sure we’ll wait forever.”
That exchange led to a fully-fledged quarrel until he called me the name he had in mind and several others besides. He was always very coarse when he was angry, and although I knew it was weak of me to be so sickened by rough language, I couldn’t help myself. Any conversation relating to the Marriage Act made me feel physically ill.
After a scene like that I would usually make some excuse to sleep alone for a few days, but this in the end proved no solution to our troubles. It was
hurtful to me when Patrick welcomed my suggestion, humiliating for me later when I was obliged to remind him that we both wanted children, nightmarish when in desperation I had to try to seduce him. Despair overwhelmed me not merely because I wanted a child but because I wanted Patrick himself—because I longed to end the loneliness that engulfed me whenever he turned his back—but as time passed and I found it increasingly hard to decide whether I was more unhappy with the Marriage Act than without it, I even began to wonder if I could scrape up enough courage to leave him.
But that would have been madness. A woman who leaves her husband has no place in society, no future. She is ruined, and although I knew I could bear the burden of a failed marriage in private, the idea of displaying that burden for all the world to see was unthinkable. Anything, I thought, anything at all would be better than that.
So I tried to keep myself very occupied in order to take my mind off my troubles. That was easy enough in London, where there were always so many people to see, but in the country … The very thought of country life filled me with dread.
“Your trouble,” said Patrick, “is that you have no interests. In fact you’re no damned good at anything except spending money, looking decorative and flirting behind potted palms.”
He often made me cry, but I would always try not to cry in front of him. I would cry when I was alone, and I would cry especially when he said I was no good at anything because I knew it was true. Patrick was so much more artistic than I was that I shied away from painting and sketching, and although I did play the piano I had no gift for it. I did a little reading and a little sewing, a little of this and a little of that, but as Patrick had made all too clear, my accomplishments were no more than mediocre.
Yet I felt sure I was gifted at something, if only I could find out what it was. I thought about it a great deal, and gradually as one childless year succeeded another I came to realize that I wanted a baby not merely because it was expected of me but because I was sure I would have a talent for motherhood. I began to pray constantly for a baby. I had never been deeply religious before, being too much preoccupied with myself to take more than the conventional notice of God, but then I did become very religious, and by some extraordinary miracle my prayers were answered when Ned was born.
I knew as soon as I held him in my arms what my talent was. It wasn’t simply motherhood. It was loving. I looked down at my son and loved him as passionately as I had loved my father and brother, and the one thought that remained with me long afterward was: If I could only meet a man whom I could love as I might have loved my husband, I would love him with such a passion that he could not help but love me a little in return.
III
After Ned was born Patrick and I made all sorts of vows and promises to each other to mark the mending of our marriage. These were preceded by confessions in which we admitted all our past faults and regretted them. No couple, I swear it, were ever more determined to reform than we were.
“I love you very much, Sarah,” said Patrick, “and I’m going to turn over a new leaf now, I promise you.”
I was moved enough to echo this promise, and settling down together harmoniously, we began to turn over our new leaves.
It took me some months to recover my health after Ned was born, but neither of us minded the excuse this gave us to sleep apart. However, eventually we no longer had an excuse to avoid each other at night, and as soon as the Marriage Act reared its ugly head again I realized that all the good intentions in the world could be useless when attempting to cure the incurable.
But I said nothing. I could at least pretend to reform, even though the pretense was hard, and besides I was older now, wiser. In the past I had complained too much, but that at least I could change. I had been sullen and bad-tempered also, the antithesis of a meek, submissive wife, but that I could change too. I wanted so much to live up to my promises, and because he was living up to his I felt I doubly owed it to him not to disappoint us both.
We fell into the habit of reserving one night a week, Friday, for the chore of marital intimacy. People might laugh at this, but for us it was easier to have this set habit because then we knew exactly where we were. We knew that on the other six nights of the week we could relax with each other, and this improved our relationship very much. On Friday, knowing what lay ahead, we could prepare ourselves accordingly. We would drink a great amount of wine at dinner, I drinking almost as much as he did, and then we would retire early to avoid enduring hours of suspense in the drawing room. The wine softened my pain and sometimes killed it altogether so that I could reach that much-longed-for state in which I could close my eyes, think of something else and not mind at all. When it was over relief would make us cheerful. We would lie in each other’s arms and talk for a while of this and that, and I was really very happy then, convinced that it was better to live with the Marriage Act than without it and glad that we were both able to make the effort to be so intimate with each other.
In fact my worst difficulty after Ned was born was not in adjusting to my marital duties again but in resigning myself to living where I wanted to live least, amidst the numbing remoteness and stupefying isolation of Cashelmara. By this time I was prepared to tolerate living in the country; I had Ned to occupy my time, and I prided myself that I had passed beyond the stage of being a social butterfly who wilted when deprived of a daily diet of balls, evenings and dinner parties. I could have lived at Woodhammer Hall in Warwickshire—indeed I could have settled down anywhere in the English countryside and reconciled myself to our inability to afford to live in London. But Cashelmara. It was one of the few subjects on which Patrick and I were in complete agreement.
“I know this is a ghastly place,” said Patrick when we were making our vows to reform, “but we simply must endure it for two or three years. Duneden and Cousin George have agreed to take over my financial affairs again now that Derry’s dead, and they tell me that if only we can live quietly in Ireland for a while we’ll eventually be able to afford to go back to Woodhammer. So if you could possibly be patient, darling … I hate to ask you, but …”
Of course I promised him that I would be patient.
But it was hard. I was uncertain what I detested most about Cashelmara, but it was probably the silence. At Woodhammer the countryside was full of small sounds ranging from birds singing to otters plopping into the river, from stoats rustling in the bushes to the distant sound of a railway engine on a clear day. But at Cashelmara there was nothing. There were woods planted around the house, but I seldom saw a bird and never once caught a glimpse of a wild animal. During the great hunger of the Forties all the wildlife had been killed for food, and although the animals were said to have returned they kept themselves well hidden. No sound came from the lough. The Fooey River glided noiselessly across the bog between sandy banks, and even the rain fell so softly that it never drummed against a window pane or spattered in a water butt.
I can still hear that silence. If anyone says silence is inaudible, they have never heard the silence at Cashelmara. It was a living silence, unearthly and unnerving, but I never mentioned to Patrick how much it oppressed me. If he could endure Cashelmara without complaint, then I could too.
He had some extraordinary idea of making a garden out of the wilderness behind the house, and that spring he became quite eccentric about it, working all day at digging the earth, leveling the ground, cutting down trees and sometimes even transporting trees to other places. He employed four men to help him, but the Irish work for a pittance, so even his cousin George couldn’t call this extravagant. George did call it odd, though, for Patrick to work alongside them as if he were a navvy, and I confess I found it not only odd but humiliating. However, again I said nothing. Patrick didn’t criticize me for my absorption in Ned, so I didn’t criticize him for his absorption in his garden. After all, both of us needed some diversion to make life at Cashelmara endurable.
In the summer Marguerite returned with her boys for a visit and was full
of praise for Ned’s progress.
“He’s very acute,” she said admiringly. “Anyone can see that.”
“Marguerite says Ned is very ’cute,” I said proudly to Patrick. Of course I had known this from the day he was born, but it was very pleasant to hear someone else admit it. And indeed Ned did look ’cute. He would sit up straight, and his eyes were very bright in his small shining face. He had blue eyes, fair hair and pink cheeks.
“The picture of health,” said my sister-in-law Madeleine approvingly. Madeleine called on us every week from Clonareen, where she was in charge of the dispensary, and had been a great comfort to me in my confinement. I had been dreading having a baby in a place as remote as Cashelmara, but when Madeleine had assured me I would have no difficulty I was so impressed by her confidence that I became confident too. She had just persuaded a retired doctor from Dublin to come to Clonareen to help her. Dr. Townsend was well into his sixties, but it was impossible to persuade a younger man to settle in such a place, and I suspected that the only reason Dr. Townsend had come was that he had been too overwhelmed by the force of Madeleine’s personality to refuse. She had met him during a visit to the Archbishop, and it was reported that Dr. Townsend had never been the same since.
“But Madeleine will never marry,” said my other sister-in-law, Katherine, pityingly. “She’s much too eccentric for that.”
I liked Katherine. She had marvelous taste in clothes and always wore the most ambitious hair styles, which made me positively green with envy.
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