1879. Eight years ago. What had happened and why had everything gone so wrong? Was it all Mr. MacGowan’s fault? Or had my father always been wicked and I had simply been too young to notice? Why was my father so wicked? And why, why, why couldn’t I stop thinking about him when he revolted me so much?
My questions went on and on and on, but there were no imaginable answers, and finally I thought to myself in desperation: I’ve got to talk to someone about it. I must, or I’ll go mad.
I went to Nanny. Nanny always had an answer for everything. Some of my earliest memories of nursery life consisted of me asking Nanny endless questions and Nanny providing sensible answers. (“Nanny, why is the sky blue?” “God made it that way, dear, because it’s so restful on the eyes.”)
“Nanny,” I said, “I feel very angry with my father and I want to stop thinking about him but I can’t. Is it wrong to feel so angry with him?”
“‘Honor thy father and thy mother,’” said Nanny.
“You mean it is wrong of me to feel angry with him.”
“There’s no need to feel angry, dear. Don’t think about him at present.”
“But I can’t help it! Nanny, was he always so wicked?”
“Now, Ned dear, we won’t talk about that. It’s not fitting.”
“But I want to talk about it! Why is he so wicked? I don’t understand.”
“Just don’t worry your head about it, dear. It’s not right for you to worry about such things, and I’m sure your mama would be the first to agree.”
“I suppose you now think Mama’s very wicked too.”
“‘Judge if ye be not judged,’” said Nanny.
“But, Nanny—”
“It’s not for you and me to discuss such things,” said Nanny firmly. “My station in life is to look after you children, and your station in life is to be a good brother and a good son. So long as you try to do your duty everything else will take care of itself.”
“But, Nanny, it’s not taking care of itself! And how can I be a good son to my father in the circumstances? Every time I think of him I get upset. I can’t sleep properly at night any more because I worry about it so much.”
“Poor dear,” said Nanny, kissing me. “You mustn’t worry. I’ll make you some nice hot milk tonight to help you sleep. Do you remember how you used to love your hot milk? You even liked the skin on the top! I never knew another child who liked the skin.” I started to say something else, but she said quickly, “You’d better talk to your uncles when they come back from England. They’re both good decent young men. You talk to them.”
At least she was prepared to be charitable to my mother. I knew I should have been glad that I no longer had to worry about Nanny giving notice, but I was too busy worrying instead about what I was going to say to my uncles.
They came back a week later. My father had been installed in a London nursing home, and my uncles had spent long sessions with the family lawyer, Mr. Rathbone, to decide how the estate should be administered while my father was unfit. With my father’s consent a trust had been set up with my uncles and my mother as trustees. My father had objected at first to my mother’s appointment, but for practical reasons he had been advised to consent. My mother, living at Cashelmara, would be in a position to supervise whoever administered the estate, and Mr. Rathbone thought she should be put in a position where she could be held legally as well as morally responsible for the estate’s affairs. My uncles had promised to visit Cashelmara regularly to look into estate matters, but it suited neither of them to live in Ireland. My uncle Thomas was a doctor who specialized in pathology, and my uncle David, who was a gentleman of leisure, had just fallen in love with a young lady who lived in London.
Both my uncles were prepared to appoint Drummond agent on a six months’ trial.
“I suppose that was why you wanted to see us in private, Ned,” said Uncle Thomas. “You wanted to have a further discussion about your mother’s relationship with Drummond.”
“No,” I said. “I wanted to discuss my father’s relationship with MacGowan.”
There was a sharp, awkward silence. Neither of them moved.
“I’ve been thinking such a lot about my father,” I said in a rush, “and there are so many things I’d like to know. For instance, was my father always as wicked as that? Was he as wicked with his friend Mr. Stranahan as he was with Mr. MacGowan? And if he was, why did he marry Mama in the first place? And why are people wicked like that? Why does it happen? And why did Mama marry him if—”
“My dear Ned,” stammered Uncle David, “there’s absolutely no need for you to know about such things at present. You’re far too young.”
“But I’m going to be fourteen soon,” I said desperately, “and there are some things I’ve got to understand. I worry about them all the time—you don’t realize.” I stopped. It was too hard to go on, but presently Uncle Thomas said, not unkindly, “Your father’s a troubled man. He’s very ill. One can only hope that once he’s restored to health he’ll be able to make the moral effort to conquer his vices and lead a normal life. Meanwhile, David’s right and there’s absolutely no need for you to concern yourself with such things, just as there’s no need for you to worry. No need at all.”
“Yes, but …” I thought of my sleepless nights. “I worry about other things,” I said. “I know there’s no need, but I do.”
“What other things?”
I opened my mouth, but no words came. After a long while I said, “Nothing,” and turned away from them.
I tried to talk to my mother. I went to her boudoir when I knew Drummond was in Clonareen, and I asked her why my father had married her if he preferred men to women.
“I can’t talk about that,” she said.
“But …”
“Your father’s been very cruel to me. I can’t talk about him any more. It upsets me too much.”
I went away. The next thing to happen was that I quarreled with my uncles. It was time for them to return to their home in England, and on their last afternoon at Cashelmara they suggested that arrangements could be made for me to go to boarding school.
“No, thank you,” I said politely.
“I think it would be best,” said Uncle Thomas, his glance flickering around the room as if he were assessing my surroundings and finding them wanting. “I’m afraid this isn’t a suitable environment for you at present.”
I said nothing.
“We weren’t suggesting you should leave immediately,” said Uncle David carefully. “We know how fond you are of your home. But perhaps in the new year—”
“No,” I said.
“You must get a decent education and meet boys of your own class,” said Uncle Thomas briskly. “It would be quite wrong for us to let you stay in this isolated place with some poor wretch of a tutor and only your brother and sisters for company.”
I managed to hold my tongue.
“But why don’t you want to go, Ned?” asked Uncle David kindly. “You’d like it! School’s great fun.”
“—” I said.
“You mind your language this instant!” exclaimed Uncle Thomas angrily. “You’re not talking to Drummond! In fact when you behave like this you only make us more determined to remove you from Drummond’s most unfortunate influence and take you to England at once!”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “I refuse.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve been dragged around from place to place for damn nearly two years and everything’s changed and gone wrong and nothing’s the same any more except Cashelmara—and if you try to drag me away from Cashelmara I’ll run away, I’ll fight you, I’ll—”
“Ned—”
“Leave me alone!” I yelled as Uncle David tried to put a comforting arm around my shoulders, and I stumbled out of the room before I could burst into tears.
Running out of the house, I tore down the drive through the rain. I was crying like a baby by this time, but I was so upset I didn
’t care. I ran on, hardly able to see where I was going, and the hoarse sobs hurt my throat so that every gasp for breath was an ordeal. I stopped only when I reached the gates and cannoned without warning into someone coming the other way.
“Holy Mother of God!” Drummond exclaimed, astonished. “And what the devil would be the matter with you?”
IV
He made me sit down by the side of the drive and lean my back against a tree. Then, lighting a cigarette, he offered me a puff. He had done that once or twice in America as a treat, so I knew how to inhale without choking.
“Now,” he said, sitting down beside me, “I’ve hardly ever seen you shed a tear, and to be sure it’s wonderful to know you’re as human as the rest of us, but what’s this particular tear in honor of—or is it best not to ask?”
“My uncles want to send me away to school in England,” I said. “I don’t want to go.”
“Say no. They can’t force you. They’re not your guardians.”
“I know I went to school in America, but that was different,” I said. “I don’t want to leave Cashelmara now.”
“Indeed you don’t! And why would anyone in his right mind want to be sent to England? Have another puff.”
“My father wouldn’t want me to be sent away,” I said. “He hated school. He ran away twice. He told me. He said he’d never send me away. I’ve been thinking about my father such a lot, Mr. Drummond. I can’t stop thinking about him.” To my horror I began to cry again. I began to wonder if I was going mad. It wasn’t like me to weep for no good reason. I wondered fearfully if it were some malignant early sign of effeminacy.
“What’s worrying you?” said Drummond.
“My father’s wickedness. His … drunkenness. Is it—would it be … hereditary?”
He roared with laughter. “All the sons of drunkards I knew grew up and took the pledge!”
“Then why do people become wicked? Drunkards, I mean.”
He thought for a long moment before saying simply, “It’s like an act of God.”
“An act of God? My father’s wickedness?” I screwed up my courage. “All of it?”
He thought again and then said firmly, “All of it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, you see, you can talk about sin and vice and wickedness, but they don’t truly mean much. They’re only words.” He looked up the drive in the direction of the house, and suddenly I knew he was thinking of my mother. “They’re words for priests,” he said, “and for those who have never met a temptation they can’t refuse. That’s not a sneer at priests or good moral souls—to be sure we’d all like to live good lives and go to heaven at the end of them, but sometimes something happens which you have no power to change and then it’s like being afflicted by an act of God and there’s nothing you can do but make the best of it.”
“I see,” I said. “You mean it’s like an incurable illness that isn’t infectious. One has no control over it”
“Perhaps some people have. But others haven’t, that I know very well.”
“So my father would be one of those who haven’t.”
“Well, what do you think? Can you imagine any man turning his back on your mother unless he was struck down by an act of God with no control over his recovery? Jesus, it would take an act of God to explain such behavior!”
“Then it wasn’t really my father’s fault,” I said. An enormous burden seemed suddenly lifted from my shoulders. “He didn’t choose to be wicked. The act of God gave him no choice.”
“That’s right,” said Drummond.
“I see. Mr. Drummond, about the act of God … Well, how soon does one know if one’s afflicted? I mean, does it strike one suddenly—like lightning?” I added, groping for inspiration among better-known acts of God.
There was a pause. Again he smoked and thought about the question. I liked the way he did that.
“My father, for instance,” I said. “Was he just like anyone else when he was younger?”
“I didn’t know your father well,” said Drummond at last, “but from what your mother says I’d guess the difference was part of him from the beginning although he never saw it till late in life.”
“Why not? Is it so hard to tell? Surely there must be some way of knowing—symptoms …”
He looked at me. His eyes were very dark, and at the corners the skin was creased when he smiled. “You don’t have to worry, Ned,” he said, and it was like all those times when he had said, “I’ll take you home to Cashelmara.” It never occurred to me not to believe him.
I swallowed awkwardly. “Well, of course I wasn’t worrying about myself, but … I just don’t understand why my father didn’t know he was different.”
“Maybe he did know. But that doesn’t really matter. All that matters is that for a while he didn’t want to be different. That’s why he got married. He wanted to be just like everyone else.”
“But he shouldn’t have got married, should he? That was wrong of him.”
“It was a mistake. Your mother made a mistake too when she married him. Hell, we all make mistakes! It’s only the saints in heaven who never put a foot wrong.”
After a pause I said, “If I had a choice I’d never get married and then I’d never run the risk of marrying the wrong person. But I suppose I shall have to get married one day to provide an heir for Cashelmara.”
“That would be thoughtful,” he agreed, “and such a comfort he’ll be to you in your old age.”
“I hope it’s not too difficult. Producing an heir, I mean.”
“Easiest thing in the world. Some nice girl will do all the work for you, and afterward everyone will tell you how clever you are.”
“That does sound easy, I suppose.”
“If it was hard, do you suppose priests would spend so much time pushing people to the altar before the poor sinners put their immortal souls in peril?”
“Well, naturally I wouldn’t indulge in temptations of that nature unless I was married. Anyway, I can’t imagine ever finding a girl who would be worth such a fuss.”
“What about Kerry Gallagher?”
“Oh, that’s quite different,” I said. “Kerry’s my friend. May I have another puff of your cigarette, please?”
He let me have another puff, and presently I found myself asking him other questions about carnal matters as easily as if we were discussing the weather. The questions came tumbling out, one after the other, like a flock of sheep rushing pell-mell through a gate, and Drummond fielded them as deftly as any shepherd with a long crook.
At last I was able to say, “I feel much better.”
“In that case let’s go back to the house before the rain comes,” he said, and I scrambled to my feet as the first drops began to patter through the woods.
Halfway up the drive I remembered my uncles. “Can you ask Mama to tell my uncles that I’m not going away?”
“I will indeed, and if she refuses—which she won’t—I’ll ask them myself.”
“I shall be fine so long as I stay here,” I said carefully, working it out. “But I don’t want to go to England and I don’t want to see my father. I do understand better about my father now, and I’m sorry he’s afflicted; but I’d still prefer not to see him. Nobody’s going to force me to see him, are they?”
“Nobody on earth,” said Drummond, forgetting my aunt Madeleine, and we walked the last yards to my father’s house side by side.
Chapter Two
I
“IT’S YOUR DUTY TO visit your father, Ned,” said my aunt Madeleine. “He has asked to see you, and now that he’s better there’s no reason why you should stay away.”
Some time had passed. It was January of 1888, six months after our return to Cashelmara, and we were all beginning to feel settled at last. I hadn’t seen my uncles since October, when they had again tried to persuade me to go to school, but my mother had refused to accept this suggestion, and eventually a tutor had been hired. His name was Mr. Watson
. He was elderly and fussy and made me work too hard, but I did my best to please him for fear that if I didn’t my uncles would talk again of sending me away.
Meanwhile, my mother had obtained a divorce and absolute custody of all her children. According to the law it was impossible for her to get a divorce solely on the grounds of cruelty, which would have been the kindest, most discreet description of my father’s conduct, and so she was obliged instead to reveal the full extent of his unnatural behavior. Despite the fact that my uncles persuaded my father not to fight her by cross-petitioning on the grounds of adultery, the scandal was immense, and no doubt my mother, who unlike my father had to be present at the hearing, suffered enormously. However, very little of the scandal filtered into Cashelmara. My mother even said to Drummond that it was the first time she had ever been glad of Cashelmara’s remoteness. The newspapers were stopped for two weeks, three servants were dismissed on the spot for gossip, and the use of the word “divorce” was forbidden at all times.
“Why did Papa divorce us?” said Jane, confused. “Why doesn’t he come to see us any more?”
“We won’t mention that nasty word, dear,” said Nanny, loyal to my mother, but I knew she was troubled because she said immediately afterward, “He’s not divorcing any of you, Jane. You children have nothing to do with it.”
But Eleanor didn’t believe her. “It’s my fault, isn’t it?” she whispered to me when Nanny’s back was turned. “Papa turned against me when I wouldn’t kiss him goodbye.”
I managed to persuade her that this was untrue, but afterward I asked my mother to explain to my sisters what the divorce meant so that they wouldn’t invent horrifying stories about it.
My mother refused. “One question leads to another,” she said. “They’ll want to know why I wanted the divorce, and how could I possibly explain to them about MacGowan?”
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