But my father answered, “I always go riding with Ned on Saturday mornings. Go by yourself if you don’t want his company.”
People always talk as if my father never spoke up to MacGowan, but he did. And people always say that nothing ever ruffled MacGowan, that he was as cold and hard as a block of marble, but he wasn’t because I saw him flush when my father reproved him, and when he looked at me I saw he was so embarrassed that he didn’t know what to say.
“Very well,” he said at last. “We’ll all go.”
But of course I immediately turned to my father in a great sulk and said I didn’t want Mr. MacGowan’s company on our precious Saturday-morning ride.
MacGowan was more embarrassed than ever. I remember him shifting from one foot to the other as he waited for my father to rescue the situation, but when my father said nothing he had to rescue it himself.
“I’m sorry, Ned,” he said. “I had business to discuss with your father and I thought you’d be bored if you came with us, but the business can wait. I hope you’ll come.”
I didn’t swallow that either. Children always know when they’re being fobbed off.
My father squatted down on the floor beside me and looked me straight in the eyes. “Mr. MacGowan didn’t mean to offend you, Ned,” he said. “He simply didn’t think before he spoke. We all do that sometimes, so don’t hold it against him now that he’s apologized. Come on, let’s go or the morning will be wasted before we’ve been anywhere.”
That evening MacGowan tried to make amends to me. He gave me some pictures for my scrapbook and talked to me about Scotland, although he soon ran out of things to say. He had no way with children, and although he tried hard to be friends with me, his shyness was a handicap to him.
Nobody ever mentions MacGowan was shy, although I have heard my mother say he was reserved, never speaking of his family or his past. In fact he was an extremely difficult person to know well and not the kind of man who made friends easily. I think that was why, when he made friends with my father, he stuck to him through thick and thin. People said it was just greed for my father’s money, but it was a lot more than that. My father was everything MacGowan was not—good-looking, charming and likable—and MacGowan would have been at first flattered and then gratified by his friendship. His devotion to my father was inevitable in the circumstances, his jealousy of my mother the natural result of his single-minded admiration.
People always say my father was completely under MacGowan’s thumb, but MacGowan was far more enslaved than anyone was willing to believe. Also people often confess themselves baffled to know what my father could possibly have seen in MacGowan, although to me it’s obvious. MacGowan was a strong man physically, and this strength together with his sharp, shrewd brain combined to produce an aura of power that held my father spellbound. My father was susceptible to the idea of power. “He was a powerful man,” he would often say of his own father, and I could see the idea of power was thrilling to him, perhaps because he himself was a gentle man and the brutality of power, being foreign to his peaceful nature, had for him the irresistible fascination of the unknown.
After my mother left home and went to America MacGowan was pleasanter to me than ever, probably because he was in such good spirits to have my father all to himself for a while, but although I no longer resented him as I once had I never really liked him. Yet sometimes I felt I almost did. When he helped me choose a tree for my little garden, for instance, he went to great trouble and couldn’t have been nicer to me. Afterward, long afterward, when I was listening to Maxwell Drummond telling me my father was a pervert, all I could think of was MacGowan helping me choose the little fir tree for my garden. I was very careful to think of MacGowan while Drummond was talking because I knew I wouldn’t be able to bear it if I thought of my father.
I didn’t think of my father for a long time after that, and I didn’t think of MacGowan either. I was like a sufferer from vertigo who sees the world tilting crazily before his eyes and can only cling with both hands to the ground beneath his feet while he waits for the dizziness to pass. So I clung to my ground, which at that moment was America, and thought neither of the future, which was too uncertain, nor of the past, which was too painful, but only of the present. The present consisted of the company of my mother and my uncle Charles, who lived in New York. I loved my mother, and since my father was now hopelessly lost to me I was doubly terrified of losing her. That was why, when my uncle Charles told me I could continue to stay with him after he had thrown my mother out of his house, I refused to hear of it. I was afraid he would destroy my mother for me, just as Drummond had destroyed my father, and then my world would be nothing, not even a dizzily spinning parade of events over which I had no control, but an appalling void.
My mother went to live with Maxwell Drummond, and I, seeing no alternative, went with her.
I hated Drummond, just as I hated Tiffany lamps and snow-white Irish linen tablecloths and indeed anything that reminded me of the restaurant where he had told me the truth about my father. I was dreading seeing his face when he opened the door of his rooms because I was sure he’d be hoping my mother had left me behind with my uncle. I even thought he might try to get rid of me so that he could have my mother to himself. The best I could hope for, I felt, was that he would ignore me.
But he didn’t. He smiled when he saw I was with my mother and said I was welcome, and when he opened a bottle of champagne he not only gave me a glass but filled it to the brim. And throughout the months that followed he would say to me at regular intervals, “I love your mother and I’m going to take care of her. And one day I’ll take you both home to Ireland.”
My world stopped spinning dizzily. It stopped tilting at its crazy angle. “I’m going to take you home,” said Drummond, and suddenly it was no longer too terrifying to look ahead. I looked into the future and saw Cashelmara, my home, the part of my past that no one could destroy, and during the remainder of my days in exile I found myself praying night after night: Oh God, let me get home to Cashelmara and I’ll never ask even the smallest favor of you again.
II
Drummond took us back. He threw his hat in the air as he stepped onto Irish soil and he bought my mother six bunches of violets and I liked him so well I laughed.
Less than a week later MacGowan had been murdered, my father had been shuffled off to some nursing home to take a cure for his drunkenness and I no longer knew what I thought of Drummond any more, although I supposed I really had no choice but to go on liking him as best I could. I managed to banish my vertigo by telling myself everything would sort itself out once I got home to Cashelmara.
How can I describe Cashelmara in those days long ago when I was a child? It wasn’t smart, for there wasn’t enough money to maintain it properly, and it wasn’t grand, just an ordinary late-Georgian mansion. There are dozens of them in Ireland and in England too for that matter. But it was very comfortable, a good family house, one might say, and it was well situated, having pleasant views from nearly every window. To be honest I must admit it would have been an unexceptional place if it hadn’t been for the garden, but the garden was dazzling, imaginatively designed, splendidly stocked and emanating an extraordinary atmosphere of beauty and peace. It was the finest garden in Europe in my eyes, and my father, whom I had once loved, had created it out of a wilderness.
Two days after I had heard of MacGowan’s murder I had to go to my uncle Thomas’s room in the hotel in Galway and listen while he and my uncle David discussed what was to be done with Drummond.
“Do we have a choice?” I said when I was able to get a word in edgeways.
They both looked at me as if I were being very unintelligent.
“My dear Ned,” said Uncle Thomas. “Drummond may think he can step neatly into MacGowan’s shoes, but I’ll be damned if I’ll appoint him to be agent. I don’t trust him an inch.”
“But don’t you see?” I said, bewildered, wondering why it wasn’t as plain to them as it
was to me. “It doesn’t make any difference whether you appoint him or not. Even if you employ another man, Drummond will be the one who makes the decisions. You’ll both be in England, and my mother will ask Drummond to manage the estate either with the agent or without him.”
“Oh, I don’t think your mother would be able to do that,” said Uncle David doubtfully.
“Legally impossible,” said Uncle Thomas with severity.
“Look, Uncle Thomas,” I said, “I don’t mean to be impertinent, but you simply don’t understand. Drummond’s going to do just what he bloody well likes, and my mother isn’t going to stop him either. What’s more, that needn’t necessarily be a bad thing, so wouldn’t it be better if we dealt him a decent hand instead of making trouble by standing in his way?”
“Gracious me!” said Uncle David. “You’re talking just like an American card-sharper, Ned!” And Uncle Thomas added, “Don’t you think it’s time you started talking like an Englishman?”
“Hell no!” I said, beside myself with frustration by this time. “Why the devil should I? I’m not an Englishman. I never was and I never will be! I was born in Ireland and I grew up in Ireland and now I’m back in Ireland after two years in America and I’m telling you that once we’re at Cashelmara Drummond’s going to be calling the shots. He’s got rid of MacGowan, just as he always planned he would, and he’s using you to get rid of my father, and then he’s going to settle down at Cashelmara and look after my mother—and if you don’t get in his way everything might work out quite well—at least until I come of age and can take care of the estate myself. You say you can’t trust Drummond, Uncle Thomas. Well, you’re wrong. You can trust him to work hard and provide for my mother and her children because he’s been doing exactly that for the last two years.”
They stared at me. They were speechless, and I saw that my speech, littered with American crudities, had shocked them to the core.
I tried again. “Look, sirs,” I said, scraping together as much of an English accent as I could remember, “I’m sorry if I’ve been rude, but I’m dreadfully upset. I don’t want any more trouble and people fighting each other, and I’m just afraid that if you start fighting my mother and Drummond the trouble will flare up all over again and there’ll be no end to it. I know you don’t like Drummond, and I know you don’t like him living with my mother, but can’t you at least give him a chance to prove himself? He’s been very good to us.”
This touched them, as it was meant to.
“Poor Ned,” said Uncle David. “What you must have been through.”
“Well, perhaps we should give Drummond a chance,” said Uncle Thomas. “Perhaps he does deserve at least that. But he’s damned well got to be discreet with your mother or Sarah’s going to be in deep trouble later when she seeks a divorce.”
“It’s all so appallingly unsuitable,” said Uncle David. “For the children, I mean. Good Lord, can’t you hear Madeleine’s comments? She’s bound to say the children’s moral welfare will be endangered.”
“I can’t believe Aunt Madeleine would be quite such a fool,” I said, forgetting myself again. “Four children live in the care of a drunken pervert and no one gives a damn, but once they’re in the care of their mother, who’s the best mother in the world even if she does sleep with a man who’s not her husband, their moral welfare is endangered.”
This created an uproar naturally. They both leaped to their feet, and although Uncle David began, “My dear Ned …” Uncle Thomas shouted him down.
“Look here!” he said sharply. “This sort of behavior won’t do at all, you know. I’m sorry, but it won’t. You’re thirteen and a half years old and you should know by now that children your age should keep a civil tongue in their head when talking to their elders. I realize you’re upset and that this upheaval is very distressing for you, but you’ll gain nothing whatsoever by being rude. Now listen to me. It’s quite untrue to say no one cared a scrap about the unsuitable environment at Cashelmara both before and after you left for America. Madeleine, David and I were extremely worried, and had Sarah not decided to come home we might well have gone to the Court of Chancery and applied for the children to be made wards of court. That would have made it possible for the children to be removed from Cashelmara and placed in the care of a guardian appointed by the judge. The only reason we were reluctant to take this step was because your father—as you may or may not remember—is devoted to his children and we found it very hard to decide whether it would be more damaging to the children to take them away from him than to allow them to remain at Cashelmara.”
“You could have sent them to America to my mother!”
“Indeed we could not! Your father would have gone to court to oppose such a move, and no judge, believe me, would have consented to children being sent abroad to a deserting wife who was living in adultery.”
“But—”
“Don’t interrupt! And don’t you interrupt either, David! I’m going to have my say. Listen, Ned. We all know that your father is at present unfit to have charge of his children. What you seem incapable of realizing is that a judge might say your mother is no more fit than your father is to have charge of them. I’m not saying he would say it. I’m merely saying he might say it. That’s why it’s very important to try and settle these family troubles privately and keep them out of the courts. Please don’t think we’re unsympathetic to your mother. We’re not. We’re on her side and we think your father has treated her abominably. But you must realize that she’s not exactly as white as driven snow herself and that there are plenty of people, not least your aunt Madeleine, who would be justified in complaining about your mother’s relationship with Drummond. Have I made myself clear?”
“We want the welfare of all you children to come first,” said Uncle David. “We only want to do what’s best for you, but sometimes it’s so difficult to know what the best is. In fact sometimes I feel equally angry with both Patrick and Sarah. It upsets me to think of children suffering just because their parents can’t behave as parents should.”
After a pause I said, “I just want to go home. That’s all I want. I want to take my mother home.”
That was when they told me they would be leaving the next day for Cashelmara to take my father away to England to cure his drunkenness. Once he was gone my mother would be able to go home with her children.
My brother and sisters had arrived the day before at the hotel in the company of my uncle David, Nanny and the new governess, who was called Miss Cameron. I had not met her before, but I had known Nanny all my life, and seeing her again was just as exciting as seeing John, Eleanor and Jane.
When they arrived I was waiting for them in the hotel hall, and the first person I saw was Nanny as she hauled herself down from the carriage. Nanny was short and dapper and always wore a widow’s bonnet and dozens of red flannel petticoats. The bonnet was worn in memory of the Dear Departed One, who had died in the Crimean War. They had been married only two weeks before the Dear Departed One had left to serve his country, and Nanny had been widowed at the age of twenty-one. The idea of remarriage appalled her—“Not at all proper, and the dear Queen would be the first to agree”—and although now I can wonder if such sentiments were really a compliment to her husband, when I was a child they seemed eminently noble and fitting.
Nanny believed very much in doing what was fitting. According to her definition this encompassed a belief in good manners, truthfulness, the Ten Commandments and the British Empire and excluded all foreigners (including the Irish), spiritualism and the Salvation Army. To explain her continuing presence at Cashelmara it should be understood that she had decided it was her mission in life to bring up four poor little English children condemned through no fault of their own to live among savages. However, she was fiercely loyal to my mother, despite the fact that my mother wasn’t English, and when it had become obvious that my mother planned to remain in America, Nanny had been the first to spring to her defense.
“Sh
e’ll be back one day,” she said. “You mark my words.” And when I still complained she demanded, “Do you think she would ever have left you if I wasn’t here to save you poor innocent lambs from the wickedness of the world?” I had no idea then what wickedness she was referring to, but I did know she would never leave us. It wouldn’t have been “fitting,” as Nanny would have said. It wouldn’t have “suited” at all.
“Nanny!” I shouted as she leaped spryly from the carriage, and rushing forward, I grabbed her in my arms and swung her off the ground.
“Mercy!” shrieked Nanny, red petticoats flying. “You’re tall as a maypole!”
I wasn’t, but I was pleased to hear her say so. “How wonderful to see you again!” I cried, giving her another twirl.
“Heavens above!” gasped Nanny. “What a nasty American accent!”
A dark head stuck itself from the carriage window. “Ned!” yelled my brother John. “Ned, I’m ten years old now—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten!”
“Hullo, John!” I yelled back in delight. “So you became a mathematician!”
“Ladies first, Johnny,” said Nanny briskly. “Don’t be in such a hurry to get down! Come along, Eleanor.”
I had forgotten how pretty Eleanor was, and now I saw she looked prettier than ever. Her fair hair was set in ringlets, and her violet eyes were enormous in her heart-shaped face. “Eleanor!” I exclaimed, kissing her admiringly, and waited for the familiar stream of chatter, but to my astonishment not a word was said. Eleanor hid her face in her hands and burst into tears.
“There, there, precious,” said Nanny, putting her arms around her, and seeing my horrified expression, she added soothingly, “The excitement’s too much for her. She’s been high-strung lately. Johnny, help Jane down, there’s a good boy.”
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