An Embarrassment of Riches

by Margaret Pemberton

  She had been so close to tears that she had been unable to answer him. Rising from her chair she had walked across to the windows that looked out over the avenue and had stood staring in the direction of the Schermerhorn mansion.

  ‘It isn’t often I give advice,’ Henry said gravely, ‘but I’m going to offer some now. Make up with Isabel. Life is too short to remain unreconciled with people you love.’

  He left the room and she remained where she was, staring with unseeing eyes at the turrets and pinnacles of Fifth Avenue’s skyline.

  She was still there when Alexander entered the room. ‘Where’s Henry?’ he said in surprise. ‘I thought the two of you were playing chess.’

  She turned towards him, her face as pale as a carved cameo, blue shadows beneath her eyes. ‘He left a few minutes ago. He told me that Isabel is leaving New York and returning to Ireland. Did you know?’

  ‘No,’ he said, understanding now why she looked so distressed. ‘Although there have been rumours. Bessie told Charlie’s mother she thought it possible that Isabel would leave the city before spring.’

  ‘She’s going at the end of the month.’

  He regarded her gravely, knowing that she was near to tears.

  ‘Then you must go round to Bessie’s. You must see Isabel and you must tell her that you never meant her to be so hurt by the letter you sent her. You must put things right between the two of you before it’s too late.’

  Her eyes held his. ‘There’s something I need to know, Alexander. Something I’ve wanted to ask for a long time.’

  ‘To do with Isabel?’

  She nodded.

  He frowned slightly, perplexed. ‘Then what is it? Why are you looking so serious?’

  He had only just come in from outdoors and snowflakes were rapidly melting on his hair. The streaks of silver at his temples, tangible proof of the suffering he had undergone during the hours of her kidnapping, did not detract in the slightest from his devastating handsomeness. They merely seemed to heighten the glossy blue-blackness of the rest of his hair and added a touch of intriguing maturity to his devil-may-care, negligent sexuality.

  She said with difficulty, ‘Were you and Isabel … in love … during the months you were at Newport together?’

  The stunned astonishment on his face was her answer.

  ‘Good God, no! You surely haven’t been thinking … Me and Isabel?’

  Relief suffused her and hard on its heels came shame. ‘It was just that I know how much Isabel admires you and Ariadne wasn’t with you in the summer and Isabel was and …’

  ‘But how could you have even thought such a thing?’ His bewilderment was total. ‘I’ve always regarded you and Isabel as sisters. And Isabel would never have … not in a hundred years!’

  Her cheeks were scarlet. She said, trying to explain to herself as well as to him, ‘I was so heartbroken last summer. You had asked for a legal separation and I wasn’t very strong. I was still recovering from smallpox and I think now that perhaps my nerves weren’t very strong either. You and Isabel were at Newport and I was on my own at the Lakes and I began to think all kinds of things …’

  He crossed the room and took her in his arms. ‘Whatever you thought, there was no truth to it,’ he said gently. ‘I spent the most wretchedly celibate summer of my life at Newport, imagining you in Kieron Sullivan’s arms.’

  He put a finger beneath her chin, tilting her face tenderly up to his. ‘We were both idiots this last summer, Maura. Don’t you be an idiot any longer. Go and see Isabel.’

  She left the house ten minutes later. There was no-one in at the Schermerhorn mansion. The maid told her that Mrs Schermerhorn and Lady Dalziel had left the house half an hour earlier.

  Instead of asking the coachman to take her back home she asked him to make a detour through Central Park. Then she asked him to wait for her while she walked over the hard-packed snow to one of the park benches, her sable coat buttoned high beneath her chin, her hands deep within her muff. As children snowballed and skated around her, she thought back to the day when she had first met Isabel, when she had scrambled to the top of the hillside overlooking the dirt-road from Killaree and waited with such tense excitement for the Clanmar carriage to appear.

  She remembered the heat of the sun on her face, the prickle of the heather beneath her bare feet. And she remembered the sight of the carriage as it had come into view, bringing with it her first sight of Lord Clanmar and Isabel.

  A snowball exploded close to her feet. On a nearby slope tobogganers shouted out exuberantly. She couldn’t feel the cold; couldn’t see the snow.

  All she could see in her mind’s eye was the Clanmar carriage rattling along the valley floor and then, as it drew parallel with the hill on which she was sitting, she remembered how the small blond-haired figure in it had turned, lifting her head and how, over the vast distance of the hillside, their eyes had met.

  She remembered how she had leapt to her feet; how she had waved; how overcome with shock she had been when the small figure in the carriage had waved back in return.

  As the cold began to sting her face she rose to her feet and walked back to the carriage.

  ‘Mrs Bessie Schermerhorn’s,’ she said to the coachman in the hope that Bessie and Isabel would have returned.

  Bessie stared at her in horror.

  ‘But my dear Maura, Isabel has gone. I’ve just this minute returned from escorting her to the pier.’

  ‘But she can’t have gone! Henry told me she wasn’t leaving until the end of the month!’

  ‘Well, that’s true, dear. That was her intention. But the cold became too much for her and as there was an available suite on today’s sailing …’

  Maura spun on her heel. She ran from the room. She ran from the house.

  ‘Pier 39!’ she gasped to the coachman. ‘Quickly! It’s an emergency!’

  Her heart was hammering as if she had been in a long race. What if she was too late? What if Isabel’s boat had sailed? What if she was already on the high seas, heading towards Ireland?

  ‘Hurry!’ she exhorted the coachman. ‘Oh, please hurry!’

  The streets were so treacherously icy underfoot that it was almost impossible for him to do so.

  ‘Oh God,’ she prayed, ‘don’t let me be too late! Please don’t let me be too late!’

  She remembered other carriage rides. She remembered her first ever carriage ride, when she had travelled from the hovel of her home in Killaree to Ballacharmish; she remembered her first carriage ride with Alexander when they had driven from the pier to the mansion that was now her home; she remembered when she had driven to meet Isabel after their painful two-year separation.

  ‘Is there still a ship at pier 39?’ she called out to the coachman as they neared the narrow and congested streets near to the river.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he called back to her. ‘A Cunarder, ma’am.’

  Minutes later they were on the cobbles of the wharf-side.

  She scrambled from the carriage, the hull of the steamship towering sheer above her. The crowd in the ship’s shadow was massive. There were passengers who had still to embark, throngs of well-wishers who had come to bid loved ones goodbye. In rising panic she pushed her way towards the first-class gangplank. What if she wasn’t allowed aboard? What if she couldn’t find Isabel? What if … ?

  ‘Maura! Maura!’

  She was overcome by a dizzy sense of déjà vu. Isabel was at the deck-rails far above her, just as she had been when she had met her after her voyage from England.

  This time it was she who shouted, ‘Don’t move! I’m coming to you!’

  This time it was Isabel who disregarded the shouted instruction.

  As she raced towards the foot of the gangplank, Isabel raced towards its head. Once again they weaved between passengers, this time passengers who were trying to embark, not disembark, once again they met in the middle of the gangplank.

  ‘I thought I was going to be too late,’ she sobbed as Isabe
l hurtled into her arms.

  ‘And I thought I was never going to see you again!’ Isabel gasped, tears pouring down her face.

  Maura hugged her and kissed and hugged her again. ‘I’ve been such a fool, Isabel! I was so shocked by the photographs of Felix holding Ariadne’s hand …’

  Isabel’s eyes flew wide. ‘But there weren’t any photographs of Felix holding Ariadne’s hand!’ she protested, shock at the very suggestion swamping joy and relief.

  Her response was so totally unexpected that Maura broke her hold of her, drawing back from her in order to look her full in the face.

  ‘There was in the Washington Globe,’ she said and, as she looked into Isabel’s stunned eyes, understanding came.

  There had been no such photograph in the New York papers. Isabel had been unaware of the photograph that had caused her such distress. Her hurt at Isabel’s lack of sensitivity over it and of the apology she had felt to be so unlovingly inadequate, had all been needless. Isabel hadn’t known.

  ‘There wasn’t such a photograph in the New York papers,’ Isabel was saying bewilderedly. ‘It was bad enough that there were photographs of Ariadne and Stasha …’

  Maura took hold of her hands, grasping them tightly. ‘I thought the photograph of Felix and Ariadne had been in the New York papers as well as the Globe. I couldn’t understand how you could have left for the Hudson Valley without any mention of it …’

  Isabel’s bewilderment turned into comprehension. ‘And I couldn’t believe that you would write such a cool and stilted letter to me …’

  Their eyes held and then simultaneously they began to giggle like schoolchildren.

  ‘How could I have been so foolish? How could I have made the two of us unhappy for so long? All over something which should have been obvious to me right from the first?’

  ‘And how could I not have had the sense to come straight back to New York and talk to you about the letter you sent me?’

  A man in livery was attempting to edge round them, a valise on his shoulder.

  ‘Excuse me, ladies,’ the gentleman following close at his heels said exasperatedly. ‘Make some room if you please.’

  ‘Come to my state-room,’ Isabel said, tucking her arm in Maura’s, tears of relief and joy still brimming her eyes. ‘We can talk there until we sail. I want to tell you all about my plans for Ballacharmish. You will visit, won’t you? You will bring Felix and Natalie?’

  ‘And Alexander and Stasha,’ Maura promised, turning with her and beginning to walk with her up the slope towards the first-class passenger deck.

  Chapter Thirty

  She was the last visitor to step ashore before the ship sailed. She stood on the wharf-side and as the ship eased its way out into the centre of the North River she waved towards Isabel until her arm ached.

  ‘Give Irish soil a kiss for me!’ a young man standing near her shouted out to a departing friend.

  A pang of longing seized hold of her. In eight days or so Isabel would be once more in Ireland. She would live at Ballacharmish again; sail on Lough Suir; walk the foothills of Mount Keadeen and Mount Lùgnaquillia.

  The ship straightened its course and began to head downstream towards the bay, its name clearly visible. It was the Scotia, the ship on which she had met Alexander, the ship on which they had been married.

  Her mouth curved in a deep, happy smile. All longing ebbed. She would return to Ireland one day but when she did so it would be for a vacation. It would not be a return home, for Ireland was no longer her home. New York was her home.

  Isabel’s waving figure was now too small to be discerned. She lowered her arm and turned, walking away from the wharf and towards her waiting carriage. In front of her the New York skyline soared crystal-clear against a snow-filled sky. She recognized the newly built spire of St Patrick’s Cathedral; the spires of fashionable Grace Church; Trinity Church; St Thomas’s Church and the Church of the Ascension.

  Her heart was full to over-flowing. Thanks to Alexander she was an American now. An Irish-American. She had everything a woman could possibly want. A cause to work for, the eradication of the slum tenements. Friendship; children; and a husband who loved her as deeply and as passionately as she loved him. With the cold stinging her cheeks and her eyes shining, she walked towards the city she had made her own.

  THE END

  Copyright

  First published in 1990 by Transworld

  This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world

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  www.curtisbrown.co.uk

  ISBN 978-1-4472-3014-4 EPUB

  ISBN 978-1-4472-3013-7 POD

  Copyright © Margaret Pemberton, 1990

  The right of Margaret Pemberton to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted in accordance

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