The Star of the Sea

by Joseph O'Connor

  Letter from Daniel Guiney in Buffalo, New York

  1 Unusually, Captain Lockwood here makes a mistake. About a dozen of the Star’s crew were Liverpudlians but none was called ‘Cartigan’. A ‘Joseph Carrigan’ is included in the Register of Crew, also a ‘Joseph Hartigan’. From enquiries made much later among the surviving crew, it seems Hartigan was the sailor whose punishment the Captain records here. – GGD

  CHAPTER XVII

  THE SUITOR

  IN WHICH A TRUE AND UNADORNED HISTORY OF CERTAIN DIFFICULT EVENTS IN THE EARLIER LIFE OF DAVID MERRIDITH IS GIVEN.

  At home for Christmas furlough, 1836, a respite from which he was never to return to the navy, David Merridith had been pushed into an engagement with the only daughter of Henry Blake, the neighbouring landlord of Tully and Tully Cross. He was now twenty-three, his father pointed out; a good age for a chap to put his head in the sack. You didn’t want to leave it very much later or you might end up having to take whatever donkey you could get. This wasn’t London. Supplies were limited. The Blake lands bordered Kingscourt in several places. Blake was in funds; Kingscourt needed heavy investment. A happy coincidence, Merridith’s father had said, and of course not the main thing or anything like it. But the two estates combined would be a force to be reckoned with. Even the Martins of Ballynahinch would be put in their place; not to mention those posing puff adders, the D’Arcys of Clifden. And Miss Amelia, after all, was the beauty of the county.

  It simply hadn’t occurred to David Merridith to marry; but in a way, he supposed, his father was right. Amelia Blake wasn’t the worst prospect. Granted, they were cousins, but extremely distant cousins, not the sort who produced web-toed, cross-eyed children. He had known her for years and danced with her sometimes at weddings. She was pleasant to look at. They had a shared interest in horses. If you couldn’t exactly call her intelligent, neither could she be fairly described as an idiot.

  David Merridith and Amelia Blake. Their names had an inevitable, satisfactory rhythm. She was a soft-featured, coltish, fidgety girl with a remarkably derisory sense of humour, which came flickering occasionally through her habitual insouciance like a fire-cracker through a foggy night. Often he found her humour unsettling. Her way of forging an alliance was to find out who you didn’t like and then to demean them as often and as vigorously as possible. This was difficult for David Merridith; there were very few people he truly disliked. She was also quite fond of hitting you as a sign of affection. Her response to a joke was a raffish slap across the shoulder. If she’d had a glass of sherry she could start flailing at you. Soon, Merridith realised, he was avoiding making jokes in her presence (not to mention giving her sherry) because he found being cuffed by his fiancée confusing.

  Two weeks after their engagement was announced, he went alone to Viscount Powerscourt’s annual shooting weekend in County Wicklow. He didn’t care for shooting, not being much of a shot; but he liked to try to understand exactly how the guns worked; the reek of gunpowder in the apple-crisp air. At dinner he had been seated across from a boyishly beautiful English girl whose carefree laughter made him want to keep looking at her. It was the first time she had been to Ireland and she found it bewitching. Her best friend, a girl with whom she had schooled in Switzerland, was the second eldest daughter of the house: one of the celebrated Wingfields of Powerscourt. He and the English girl had danced a little. She had teased him for his gaucherie at dancing the Lancers, for making a botch of the convoluted figures. They had strolled for a while on the torchlit terrace, admired the rococo fountain which decorated the ornamental lake. It had been purchased by her friend’s father in Italy, she told him, and was a copy of a piece by the great Bernini. Everyone thought it was an original but she knew it was a copy. She had a talent for spotting fakes, she said. She would like to go to Italy one day. She was sure she would get around to it.

  An attractive efficiency underlined her conversation, an assuredness he wasn’t accustomed to in the women he knew. She wasn’t like his sisters, certainly not like his aunt, and she wasn’t a giggler like Amelia Blake. There was a confidence about her that was almost brazen; it reminded him of someone he rarely thought about now. The night he met Laura Markham he had not had much sleep. Somehow he sensed that he would always know her, though in precisely which way he could not be sure.

  The next day he had found himself watching her through his field binoculars when he should have been shooting, or watching other people shoot. She and the other young women spent the morning on the terrace, wrapped in blankets, sipping coffee. Some played chess and others plucked at guitars but Laura Markham spent the morning reading The Times. Merridith found that completely intriguing. He didn’t think he had ever seen a woman reading a newspaper. He kept hoping she would find some reason to come down to the meadow, but she never did; she just sat there reading.

  Luncheon was noisy and slightly drunken. The parlour games that followed were noisy, too: a cacophony of flirtations and excuses for touching. That evening, everyone had gone holly hunting before early supper. He and Laura Markham had formed one of the teams. Daringly she had linked his arm as they crunched the gravelled pathways, as they crossed the carpet-like upper lawn, as they inspected the ranks of stately foreign trees that needed battalions of gardeners to keep them alive in Wicklow. Little interest was shown in finding holly, or in finding anything except a place to be quiet. In the lengthening shadows the plucked shrubs and primped hedges (pruned into hippogriffs and otherworldly birds) appeared slightly macabre to Viscount Kingscourt. But he felt easy in her presence; quietly companionable. Glancing back at one point, he had seen their footprints traversing the frosted lawn in untidy parallel. The sight had seemed to Merridith a signal of something peaceful. Soon they had found themselves in the Lower Pet Cemetery, where the Wingfields gave their animals the touchingly respectful burial they did not give to many of their tenants.

  She was looking at the elegant gardens in a way he found unreadable. The lights of the house in the misting distance were like those of a ship in a magnificent dream.

  ‘Is it like this in Galway?’

  ‘No, it’s wilder in Galway.’

  ‘I think I should rather like that. I like wildness.’

  She sat back onto one of the ornate porphyry slabs, the tombstone of a colt that had twice been placed in the Derby, and folded her arms with an amused sigh. A screech-owl rose from the rhododendrons with a startled clatter.

  ‘Yorkshire and Brittany and places like that. These prettified gardens make me feel slightly sad, I’m afraid. A bit like seeing a pixie forced into a corset. Don’t you agree?’

  Merridith was a little taken aback. The restrained women of his acquaintance didn’t say words like ‘corset’ in public. He suspected Amelia Blake wouldn’t even say it in private.

  ‘Perhaps you’ll come and visit us one day. In Galway.’

  ‘Yes. Perhaps you shall invite me to your wedding,’ she smiled. ‘I should like to come and observe you in your natural habitat.’

  He hadn’t realised she knew he was engaged and he wondered silently how she might have found out. It thrilled him that she might have been interested enough to ask someone. ‘Would you dance with me if I did?’ was the best response he could manage.

  ‘I might do,’ she said, gazing out at the lake. A gondola with flaming torches was gliding across it. ‘But I think you’d need more lessons first. Don’t you?’

  He remembered the first time his hand had touched her waist. She’d been wearing a white dress that Sunday night, with a sky-blue sash that emphasised the small curve of her hips. A crucifix glittered near the hollow of her neck. The dance was a waltz and his arms had ached with stiffness as he held her. ‘I suppose they don’t waltz much in Galway,’ she said. ‘Will you get me a small brandy? We’ll drink it together.’

  Brandy made him nauseous, and always had, and its popularity among sailors had helped to ruin his days in the navy. But he fetched her one anyway and watched her sip it. She hu
mmed along quietly with the elegant music, sometimes whispering a joke as a graceless dancer passed: sometimes touching the back of his wrist.

  They had admired the ancestral portraits on the third-floor landing; the grave gazings of the long-gone Wingfields. Outside her room she had shaken his hand. A kiss to his cheek was awarded like a medal. Before he knew what was happening the door had closed and he was alone beneath those gazes with the empty brandy glass.

  She was the only daughter of a Sussex industrialist family; her father’s home was near the coast. He owned several large manufactories of pottery and delftware. She was three yean younger than David Merridith but twice had been engaged before: once to a cavalry lieutenant who had died of consumption, the second time to a businessman her father knew. It was she who had ended the second engagement. She had no regrets about making the decision.

  When the weekend was over and the guests had wearily departed to prepare themselves to be wearied at the next weekend, the Viscount of Carna had remained at Powerscourt. In later years he was often to think of that time as having a carapace around it; the happiest period in a less than happy life. Certainly the happiest if you shaded Mary Duane from the picture, as by then he tended to do.

  He and Laura Markham had gone with the Wingfields up to Dublin, attending the theatre and several concerts; going to a masked ball at the Duke of Leinster’s. Seeing them waltz, their sodden old host had tottered up and congratulated them on their excellent news. ‘Nobody informed me your new fiancée was such a corker, Merridith. I dare say I should have nabbed her for myself if they had. Thoroughbred in a roomful of trotting ponies.’

  After he had staggered away in a fog of halitosis and gin fumes they laughed together at what he had said. But there was a new quality to their dancing after that. It was as though what was happening between them had finally been spoken. The closeness which dancing permitted became a way of acknowledging it.

  Merridith had accompanied her to the Italian circus; had ridden out with her in Phoenix Park in the early mornings. There they would watch the troopers parading to the screeches of the monkeys awakening in the zoo. By the end of the fortnight they were almost inseparable. On the afternoon she was leaving for Sussex, he had gone to see her off at the ferry at Kingstown. Snow was falling. Emigrants were queuing along the pier. When he tried to kiss her at the gangway she had drawn away silently, though the look in her eyes had given him hope. He tried again, but she drew away again. Yes, she said gently, of course she had feelings for him; but she wouldn’t act unfairly towards another girl.

  She didn’t envy Merridith the choice he faced now, but she wouldn’t push him or ask him to do anything. Only he could know what his true feelings were. He must do what he thought was correct and nothing else. The happiness of several people was at stake. To cause hurt to a person to whom you had given your word was a serious thing and could not be done lightly. He was to think about it calmly and carefully, she said. Every choice involved a rejection. She would understand his decision whatever it might be and would always respect it and remember him fondly. But she would only contact him again if he contacted her first. That was not to happen unless his engagement to Amelia Blake were broken off.

  On the mail-coach back to Galway, Merridith had known what would happen. There was a nobility behind Laura’s reluctance which had only made him want her more; a decency which he knew he probably lacked himself. He, a man who was promised, after all, had thought nothing of speaking of love to another woman. He would have gone further if going further had been possible. What that implied would not be easy to confront but it would have to be confronted or he would always regret it.

  Dusk was descending as the coach crossed the Shannon. A blizzard had swelled the river to breaking; farmers in drenched oilskins were banking up sandbags. Soon the landscape began to change, the prosperous meadows of the lush midlands giving way to the stonewalled scrubs of Galway. The cold air smelt of peatsmoke and the sea. He would never forget the fear that had clutched him when he saw the lights of Kingscourt Manor in the distance.

  His father was seated at the table in the library, examining a fist-sized yellow egg with a magnifying glass, making notes in a leather-bound accountancy ledger. Though it was only three weeks since Merridith had seen him, he seemed to have aged by several years. It was not long after his second stroke; the attack had left him with a tremor and greatly reduced sight. The black leather glove he usually wore on his right hand was twisted on the blotter like a poisonous spider.

  Merridith gave a knock. Without looking up, his father murmured: ‘Enter.’

  He took one anxious pace but he didn’t really enter. ‘I wondered if we might have a short talk, sir.’

  ‘I am quite well, David. Thank you for asking.’

  ‘Forgive me, sir. I should of course have asked.’

  His father nodded grimly but still did not look up. ‘This – short talk – which you would like to have. Does it concern your use of my house as an hotel to which to repair between social gatherings?’

  ‘No, sir. I apologise for the length of my absence, sir.’

  ‘I see. Then what does it concern? This short talk you would like to have.’

  ‘Well – concerning matters with Miss Blake and myself, sir.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘I have. I seem to have. That is to say.’ He gathered himself and began again. ‘I have formed an attachment to another person, sir.’

  Calmly the Earl took a tiny paintbrush from a drawer and started dusting the egg with an unsteady motion. ‘Well,’ he said, quietly, as though to himself, ‘you had better unform it in double-quick time then. Hadn’t you?’ He held the object up to the pale gold firelight; ran a finger along its circumference as though coaxing it to hatch.

  ‘I seem to recall,’ he almost whispered, ‘that certain of the “attachments” you formed in the past were not wise either. They, too, had to be unformed.’

  ‘I believe this is different, sir. In fact I am certain of it.’

  Now his father looked up at him. His eyes were like stones. After a while he rose from the table and pulled on his glove.

  ‘Come closer,’ he murmured. ‘Into the light.’

  Merridith was trembling as he moved towards his father.

  ‘Is something the matter with your shoulders, David?’

  ‘How – do you mean, sir?’

  Lord Kingscourt blinked slowly, like a sleepy cow. ‘Perhaps you would do me the inestimable honour of standing up straight when you speak to me, if you please.’

  He did as he was told. His father stared. Wind clattered the windowpanes; moaned in the chimneybreast. Slates were clacking on the creamery roof.

  ‘Are you afraid, David? Answer me honestly.’

  ‘A little, sir.’

  A long moment passed before Lord Kingscourt gave a nod. ‘Do not be ashamed. I know what it is to be afraid.’ He shuffled slowly and heavily to the mahogany sideboard where he felt for a stone decanter and awkwardly unstoppered it. Carefully he poured out a goblet of brandy, though the quake in his grip made it difficult to pour. Without turning, he asked: ‘Will you have a drink with me, David?’

  ‘No sir, thank you.’

  His hand with the decanter was hovering over a second glass, as though about to make a judgement that might have lasting implications. ‘Mayn’t a man have a drink with his own son now, without having to go up to Dublin for the privilege?’

  The grandfather clock gave a click and a whirr. The time it was telling was wrong by many hours. Somewhere in the room a lighter timepiece was ticking, as though in rattish argument with its solemn forebear.

  ‘F-forgive me, sir. I will, please. Thank you. Perhaps a small glass of wine.’

  ‘Wine,’ said Lord Kingscourt, ‘is not a drink. It is a kidney-flush for Frenchmen and prancing fops.’

  He poured the second glass of brandy to the brim and placed it on a side table beside the piano. Merridith went and took it. It felt cold to the tou
ch.

  ‘Your health, David.’ Lord Kingscourt drained half his glass in one swallow.

  ‘And your own, sir.’

  ‘I see you do not drink. Perhaps your toast is insincere.’

  Merridith took a small sip. His gorge rose.

  ‘More,’ said his father. ‘I want to be healthy.’

  He swallowed down a mouthful: eyes moistening with disgust.

  ‘All of it,’ Lord Kingscourt said. ‘You know I am very ill.’

  He finished the glass. His father refilled it.

  ‘You may be seated now, David. Over there if you please.’

  Merridith crossed to the overstuffed sofa and sat down, and his father inched painfully into a dark leather armchair, his face distended with the effort of moving. He was wearing unmatching slippers and no stockings. The eczema from which he suffered had blistered on his bony ankles, its livid scars raked with the ragged trace of fingernails.

  Again he said nothing. Merridith wondered what would happen. From somewhere in the distance a donkey gave a ludicrous bawl. When finally his father began to speak again, it was in the exaggeratedly deliberate and enunciated way he had employed to conceal his slur since the seizures had struck him. A drunk man trying to disguise his drunkenness.

  ‘I was sometimes quite afraid of your grandfather when I was your age. He and I did not enjoy the close relationship which you and I enjoy. He could be a portion of a tyrant as a matter of fact. Old-fashioned and so on. Or I felt so, at any rate. It is only in recent years that I see he meant well. That what I perceived as strictness was actually loving kindness.’ He gulped hard; glottal, as though swallowing a piece of gristle. ‘But when one is young, one always feels that about one’s father. Natural for a boy to feel like that.’