Cashelmara

by Susan Howatch

  “That’s true,” she said, and at last she did smile. “Yes, I’m sure you’re right and I’m being silly to worry.”

  We took a bath. The oil clung to us like dung on a cartwheel, but we enjoyed ourselves scrubbing away at the stains.

  “It’s a pity we’re not in Charles’s house,” said Sarah, giggling like a girl of seventeen. “There are six bathrooms there, all with marble floors and solid-gold bath taps, and the baths are almost big enough to swim in.” And the next moment she was saying restlessly, “I’m getting very tired of living beneath Charles’s roof with both him and Evadne disapproving of everything I do.”

  “Indeed and I hate it too. How would you like to live in Boston for a while?”

  “Boston!”

  “Boston.” I wrapped us both in a towel and paused to kiss her. “A good friend of mine called Liam Gallagher has a brother there who might be able to give me a job where I could make a heap of extra money—more than I could pick up here. If you wouldn’t mind living in a small apartment …”

  “I’d live with you anywhere,” she said. “You know that. But, Maxwell, you must save your money and not spend it on me or you’ll never get back to Ireland. I must try and endure staying with Charles until you have the money you need.”

  “I’ll not stand by and see you unhappy there!”

  “I’m happy so long as I can see you every day,” she said, and after that we fell into the unmade bed and pulled the blankets over our heads and warmed ourselves in the time-honored way until we were so hot I hurled all the blankets to the floor. When I smoked a cigarette she had to have a puff too, and after we’d blown smoke at each other Sarah decided the fumes would smother us both, so we went into the sitting room and gave the furniture there a hard time for a while. By noon we’d broken a spring on the sofa and were as worn out as a couple of elderly donkeys, so we fell back into bed again and slept like the dead. I’ve heard it said the powers fail a man when he’s past forty, but it’s not true. If he has a woman who’s as passionate as Sarah he’d be the devil of a man even if he was ninety—unless he was only half a man to start with, like that weakling de Salis.

  That afternoon I paid my regular visit to the headquarters of the Clan-na-Gael in New York. The Irish Republican Brotherhood might change its name as often as a rich woman changes hats, but it was alive and thriving on American soil. Many people say the Clan is different from the Brotherhood, but as I see it for all practical purposes it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other. If anyone wants to challenge me about this, let him look at it this way: Back in 1858 they began a new Irish-American version of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and they called it the American Fenian Brotherhood, or the Fenians, and their object, as we all know, was the separation of Ireland from England so that Ireland could become an independent republic. Now, the American Fenians were different from the Irish Fenians (or the Brotherhood), but both were on the same lines, and they got into trouble when they tried to invade Canada, and by the end of the Sixties they were all split into factions and the whole thing was a most unholy mess.

  Finally in 1869 the Clan-na-Gael was founded, and the first thing it did was reorganize the Brotherhood in Ireland and knock their heads together to put sense in them. Well, the Clan was successful, and before you could wink twice it had swallowed up all the Fenians and all the secret societies in Ireland except one (that was O’Donovan Rossa’s Irish Confederation) and was making an alliance with the political movement headed by the hero Parnell. That was what they called the New Departure, with everyone working for the same end—the Destruction of the Act of Union and the founding of a free Ireland, except Parnell hoped to destroy the act by Home Rule, and the Brotherhood—I mean the Clan—were pledged to a republic, being more extreme. And then the National Land League of Ireland was established and the Irish National Land League of America, and then the Land League was discredited by the Phoenix Park Murders, which were committed by a secret society called the Invincibles (which should have been swallowed up in the Clan but weren’t), and the whole thing was renamed the National League, except it was called the Irish National League in America, and at the end of 1883 the Clan divided into two, one part retaining the old name of the Brotherhood and the other part (which was larger) adopting the initials USA.

  See? It’s as clear as daylight really if you think about it. Well, I don’t quite know where all that leaves Ireland, but I do know it left me paying a call on the New York lodge of the Clan where I was a member.

  I’d joined the Clan soon after I’d settled in New York. All Irishmen of standing joined the Clan, and besides, I could see straightaway that it was the one road that might lead me to my pardon. That makes me sound very self-seeking and not interested in the Clan itself, but that’s not true. It was certainly true that my pardon was of enormous importance to me, and I would have done almost anything to get it, but of course I admired the Clan’s goals and ideals and was glad to support them. I’d led our local secret society the Blackbooters until it was taken over by the Brotherhood (the Fenians, I should say), and even after that I’d organized all the agitation arising from the Land League policies. I’d always been active in local politics, always been fighting for Irish freedom, so I was glad to be a member of the Clan. I was admitted to my lodge in the August of 1884 after being recommended by my friend Liam Gallagher who ran Ryan’s. It was the devil of a business getting in, though, and by the time I’d been balloted for and cross-examined and sworn in I felt dizzy with all the ceremonial.

  However, once I was in I had one or two unpleasant surprises. The first was that although the Clan talked very big they did very little—at least for people like me. They talked endlessly of righting Irish wrongs, but when it came down to righting the wrong of an individual Irishman they did nothing beyond promising to write to “important people” in Ireland and asking for additional “contributions” to the glorious cause. This was all very well, and I didn’t mind contributing for a while, but I had no intention of contributing indefinitely. The second thing that irritated me about the Clan was that they were by this time lukewarm toward Parnell. They said he didn’t go far enough, that he had no true policy for establishing a republic, that he was no more than an Englishman dazzling the Irish with fancy terms like Home Rule. What was Home Rule anyway? Not Republicanism, that was for sure. It was just another name for Saxon rule but with the rule coming from Dublin instead of Westminster.

  “But if we can get Home Rule we’ll be halfway to a republic!” I exclaimed, but they couldn’t understand that. It was republic or nothing for them. “But the Saxons will never let us have a republic straightaway!” I said, amazed that this wasn’t obvious to them. “No Saxon alive today would agree to a republic, but there are plenty of Saxons who aren’t averse to the Irish ruling themselves from Dublin within the framework of the Empire, and plenty of Saxons respect Parnell—”

  “Because he sounds and looks just like they do,” said the Senior Guardian of my lodge grimly.

  “But he’s united Ireland. He’s brought us all together, he’s helped us get a fair deal on our rents—”

  “He’ll never give us a republic,” said the Irish-Americans, and that, I was infuriated to discover, was always their last word on the subject. The whole trouble was they didn’t live in Ireland and they didn’t understand the great practical victories Parnell had won for the Irish. They were far too bound up in their dreams and theories to be practical, and it was impossible for them to see that Parnell’s battles at Westminster with his eighty-five loyal MPs from the Irish Parliamentary Party brought more benefits to Ireland than all the dynamite bombs set off in London.

  “Well, Sean,” I said as I entered the Senior Guardian’s stuffy little room in a downtown tenement (Sean wasn’t his real name, of course, and I won’t disclose the tenement’s whereabouts). “It’s me again. What’s the latest news on my pardon?”

  Oh, it’s you, Max Drummond,” says he. “Come and look at the new bomb we’re de
signing to blow up the Houses of Parliament.”

  I took a look at the drawings and said it was the finest bomb, the loveliest bomb and the most useful bomb I ever saw in all my life. “And have you heard from the National League yet about my case?” I added civilly.

  “Oh, there’s grand news from the League,” says he. “They say Lord Salisbury’s government can’t last six months, and once Gladstone’s in again they’ll carry the Home Rule bill and then Charles Stewart Parnell—if he’s a true Irishman—can launch the True Republic and the day will dawn when every Irishman can awake and shake off the shackles of tyranny.”

  “Amen to that,” says I, smothering the urge to strangle him. “And what about my shackles, Sean? What about the false conviction and the unjust prison sentence hanging around my neck like a tombstone?”

  ‘To be sure that’s a terrible thing, Max,” he says, “and we’re working hard to see you get your justice. But these things take a little time, and the Saxon devils don’t know the meaning of the word ‘justice’ as we know it Now, if we could send over a little more money on your behalf …”

  “I’ve paid you enough money,” I said. “Now you show me some results. Did the League engage an attorney to investigate my case?”

  “Not yet. But once the Home Rule Bill is passed and the True Republic is born everyone will get their justice, so if you could just wait a whileen …”

  I would have walked out, but I knew I mustn’t offend him, for he was the only link I had with the National League and so, indirectly, with Parnell. I just nodded and even paid him a little more money, although I was sure it went straight into his own pocket, for he was from County Cork, and they’re a devious bunch down there in the south, everyone knows that.

  Then I went out and got drunk. At this rate I’d never get my pardon, never get back to Ireland, never meet MacGowan again face to face.

  I had to get back. Had to. Well, perhaps if Parnell won his fight for Home Rule …

  But he lost. They threw out the Home Rule Bill. I read all about it in the newspaper. It was defeated in the House of Commons by three hundred and forty-three votes to three hundred and thirteen, and Mr. Gladstone said later he feared that “the child that is unborn shall rue the voting of that day.” Rioting broke out in Belfast, the Clan swore a terrible vengeance, and my faint hope of a prompt pardon went rattling down the drain. That was when I wrote the letters. I wrote to Parnell and I wrote to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and I even wrote to the Queen. Meanwhile it was July and hot as hell and Charles Marriott was talking of leaving town for his summer home in the Hudson Valley.

  “He wants me to go too,” said Sarah. “I won’t, of course, though it would be nice for Ned.”

  I was late calling for her that morning because it took me a long time to word my letter to Queen Victoria, and when I arrived it was lunchtime.

  “Why don’t we have lunch here?” suggested Sarah, seeing I was blue and making an inspired effort to divert me. “Charles never gets back from Wall Street before three, Evadne’s gone to the Island for the day to visit friends, and Ned’s tutor has taken him to the Natural History Museum. We’ll have the house to ourselves.”

  “The bathrooms too?” I couldn’t resist saying, and when we laughed I felt better.

  I’d never had the chance to see anything of Marriott’s house apart from the pokiest of the parlors, but Sarah ushered me into a swell dining room with silver candlesticks strewn over the table and a chandelier sagging from the ceiling. I thought it all very fine, except for the meal. The cook had coddled eggs in some nasty sauce and popped a sprig of parsley on top, and the footmen served some rolls and butter instead of a vegetable.

  “Jesus!” I said. “Doesn’t Charles Marriott keep any meat and potatoes in his larder?”

  Sarah giggled, the footmen looked at me pop-eyed and the black butler went yellow around the gills.

  Well, we were in a wonderful good humor by the time we went upstairs to the drawing room, but when I tried to light a cigarette Sarah said I mustn’t because Evadne would smell the smoke when she came home, so we stepped out onto a fine stone terrace for a while before I suggested we inspect the bathrooms.

  “Jesus!” I exclaimed in wonder as she led me from room to room. I had to stop in every one to turn on the taps to see if they worked, but they all did. It was amazing. Then I became fascinated by the water closets and had to pull all the chains. “Jesus!” I kept saying and once or twice I said, “Holy Mary!” until Sarah was laughing so hard she couldn’t speak and I was laughing with her. Finally we chose the third bathroom—there was such a crafty full-length mirror—and wallowed around in the enormous bath as merrily as two pigs frolicking in a trough. By this time I had quite recovered from the blues and was feeling in fine fettle.

  “Time to explore the bedrooms,” says I, wrapping a purple towel around myself, so off we went, tiptoeing down the corridor with Sarah giggling in terror in case we should bump into a servant.

  “Stop!” she gasped. “I’ve got a stitch in my side and I can’t move another step till it’s gone!”

  “Well, that’s a problem that’s easily solved,” I said and carried her across the threshold of the nearest bedroom. By some stroke of luck it was the one that belonged to Charles, and I soon found out that the springs of the enormous bed would have gratified an acrobat.

  “Your brother goes up a notch in my estimation,” I said, trying a bounce or two.

  “But we can’t stay here!”

  “Why not? I like it. Jesus, what a bed!”

  So we stayed, but Sarah was so nervous that presently I pulled out and suggested we move to her room.

  “Perhaps it would be safer,” she agreed in relief, but when I asked if she was going to straighten the covers before we left she was so hot for me she said she’d do it later.

  Later never came.

  We were just sneaking down the corridor two hours afterward so that I could slip out of the house before Ned came home from his museum when on the landing we came face to face with none other than the master of the house.

  “Charles!” exclaimed Sarah guiltily. “How early you’re back today!”

  “I’ve been back for some time,” he said, giving her the hardest of hard looks. “I’ve been busy setting my bedroom straight—and the bathroom in the north wing—before the servants could see the mess for themselves and draw their own conclusions.”

  Sarah blushed. She wasn’t the sort of woman who blushed easily, but when she did there was no hiding it. “Charles …”

  “Be quiet!” he said fiercely and swung around on me. “Get out. And never show your face in this house again.”

  “Wait a minute!” I said. No soft-living, high-stepping New York swell was going to tell me what to do. “If I’m good enough for your sister—”

  “You’re not good enough for her,” he said, never raising his voice but speaking much faster. “You’re a convicted felon and you earn your living by acting as a gunman for a criminal Irish faction downtown. Are you going to get out of this house immediately or shall I have my servants summon the police?”

  “Charles,” begged Sarah. “Please …”

  “I’m not having him in this house any more, Sarah. It’s my house and I’m entitled to refuse admittance to any man I please.”

  “But—”

  “And how dare you bring him here and behave like a whore—no, don’t pretend you haven’t treated this place as if it were a bordello! Have you no shame, no sense of decency? Does it mean nothing to you that your name is now so notorious in New York society that everywhere I go I hear people whispering, ‘There goes Charles Marriott. His sister is the one who amuses herself with cheap Irish scum—’”

  “Why, you—”

  “Maxwell!” screamed Sarah and somehow managed to slip between us before I could throw him downstairs.

  “It’s the truth!” shouted Charles Marriott. “All my friends joke about it behind my back. Evadne’s even been slighted bec
ause her sister-in-law is little better than a streetwalker!”

  “What a tragedy for you both!” cried Sarah. “Very well, I’ll leave tomorrow!”

  “Leave? Sarah, are you insane? This man’s only after your money! He won’t want the expense of keeping you!”

  “Shit!” I yelled. “I’d keep Sarah even if I had to pawn my soul to the devil to pay the rent! Get out of my way and let me take your sister out of your fucking house!”

  He went white at my language and tried to grab Sarah’s arm. “Sarah, you’re not going with that man. I absolutely forbid it. What about Ned? If you think this man’s fit company for a boy that age—”

  “Ned’s my son!” cried Sarah. “He’s not yours! And I’ll be the judge of who’s fit company for him!”

  “I’ll cut him out of my will. I’ll stop the allowance I’ve been giving you. Not one cent of mine goes into your pocket so long as you’re living with that man!”

  The doorbell rang far away.

  We looked down the stairs and saw the upturned faces of the gaping servants. After a long moment the butler recovered himself enough to stumble to the door.

  It was Ned and his tutor, back from the museum.

  “I’ll come tomorrow,” said Sarah to me in a trembling voice. “I must pack my clothes and talk to Ned. But I’ll come tomorrow morning.”

  I said nothing, just kissed her and began to walk downstairs. Ned was looking at me, and something in his expression reminded me of someone, though I couldn’t think who it was.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Drummond,” he said. He had always been very polite to me after our dinner at Ryan’s, but my hopes of taking him on expeditions had never come to anything. He had a talent for inventing excuses, and after a while I had stopped issuing my invitations.

  “Hullo, Ned,” I said, smiling at him just as I always did, and then I walked out of Charles Marriott’s house for the last time and spat at the gilded gates as I stepped past them into Fifth Avenue.