by Dorothy Eden
Cathleen laughed, then wished she hadn’t, because Kitty was completely serious. She was stating a simple fact.
And it wasn’t hard to imagine Miss Matilda O’Riordan in the position of a deity, for at that moment her voice sounded from the next room. She must have been speaking all the time in a lower tone, but now something had made her angry, and she said penetratingly:
“Don’t you dare to talk to me like that! You’ll agree to my terms or there’ll be nothing at all. And when it comes to a matter of conscience, it’s yours you should be concerned about, not mine.”
The telephone slammed down. Kitty, Cathleen noticed, was standing perfectly still listening, her eyes enormous with some kind of apprehension. But as soon as footsteps sounded next door she returned to her work, and was innocently folding skirts and underclothing when Miss O’Riordan flung open the door.
“We’re late and we’re leaving immediately,” she said. “Good heavens, Kitty, haven’t you finished that packing yet. Come along, girl, come along. Where’s my coat and hat? Ring for someone to take down the luggage, Mrs. Lamb. One would think, with the two of you—as if I haven’t had enough trouble already with that scrounging scoundrel. Is everyone in this world crazy?”
Kitty looked up.
“Who have you had trouble with, Aunt Tilly?”
“Oh—that man I employed to do repairs at the orphanage. He’d take the food out of the children’s mouths. Now get this packing finished and the bags sent down, and the car brought to the door.”
She swept back into the other room, slamming the door. Kitty worked in silence, shutting the bags and fastening them. Cathleen rang for the hotel porter, and by the time Miss O’Riordan re-emerged everything had been sent down.
She thought this might make the old lady relax, but the thin lips remained as tightly pressed, the narrowed eyes shot sparks.
“Are we ready? Then let’s go. I’ve been upset, so I warn you I’m not in a good mood. My conscience indeed! The impertinence of him! Who has committed the crime? No one but—Kitty, what are you goggling at? Mrs. Lamb, go on ahead and see that the car’s at the door.”
The car, with its highly-polished old-fashioned body, was waiting.
Cathleen climbed into the driving seat and began to study the controls. It was a moment before she noticed the dark face looking in the other window.
The man tapped and she leaned over to open the door. “What do you want?”
“Would you ever buy one of my pots, lady? Or a fine kettle? I’ve seven children at home, praise God!”
The hotel porter had seen the man and was advancing menacingly.
“Get out of here, you rascal! Go on! Make yourself scarce!”
The man gathered his pots and pans together with a clatter.
“God give you a safe journey, lady…” He grinned irrepressibly, his dark eyes gleaming. He looked back once as he went.
Cathleen stared after him thoughtfully. Where had she seen that black-brown face before?
“I’m sorry, miss,” the porter was saying. “Begging right on the doorstep. They’re getting so cheeky, there’s nothing to he done with them. I’d string them up, the devils!”
It couldn’t have been the man writing the letter in the bar, and then crumpling it up… For that had been this morning, and he had been drunk. He would be at home now, sleeping off his threats of murder and revenge. If he had a home, and didn’t live in a tinker’s cart pulled by a donkey. For the face had been remarkably similar… Not so sinisterly dark, not so deliberately ragged and untidy. But if he had dressed to look like a tinker he would have looked exactly like that…
God give you a safe journey…
The words were glib, and spoken without thought. But suddenly Cathleen felt that they were needed. She was growing as morbidly superstitious as the local inhabitants…
CHAPTER TWO
THE ROAD TWISTED BETWEEN high green hedges, it ran through small austere grey villages and past empty fields. It was a peaceful road, inhabited chiefly by small children walking home from school hand in hand, sauntering priests, farm lads on bicycles, carts drawn by pattering donkeys and an occasional flock of geese.
To Cathleen it was an entirely pleasant journey into the last century. The country beneath the rolling storm clouds was exquisitely green and peaceful.
Half-way to Loughneath, Miss O’Riordan recovered her animation. It was as if she had been silently reflecting on a problem, and had at last resolved it. For her brow cleared and she said in her resonant voice,
“I have it! We’ll make a change this year. We’ll have the little ones.”
“The what, Aunt Tilly?”
“The younger children, stupid. We’ve always had the older ones, which is hardly fair. Let’s have the little ones this year. I’ll telephone Sister Mary Martha when we get home.”
“But, Aunt Tilly, wouldn’t they—I mean, it’s a long journey for little ones.”
“Nonsense! They’re tough. They have to be, poor devils. Well, that’s settled. Mary Kate will love it.”
“Love it!”
“Of course she will. You know how she and Patsy always wanted a baby. So the little ones will upset her much less than the big ones. There won’t be all that unpleasantness about hurley games on the front lawn. She’ll forgive misdemeanours, and so will Patsy. What do you think, Mrs. Lamb?”
“Well, I—”
“Come, you must know whether you like small children or not? Did you never want a baby of your own?”
Cathleen’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.
“I had one,” she said.
“Then where is it, good God? You haven’t had it adopted, you heartless creature!”
The story would have to be told, she could see. So it had better be at once, and quickly.
“There was an accident,” she said, repeating a lesson. “My husband was taking Debby with him to pay a call on a friend. They hadn’t gone more than two miles before they were hit by another car. It wasn’t my husband’s fault at all, but he and Debby were killed. And I was at home,” her voice, she noticed, no longer faltered, “making Debby a new dress.”
“God rest them!” Miss O’Riordan ejaculated. “That’s a terrible thing. The world’s full of sadness, my dear, but it’s an ill wind, you know. With that experience, you’ll be the greatest help with my orphans. Much better than Kitty who’s never yet got to her first kiss.”
In the driving mirror Cathleen could see Kitty’s face flaming. Did Miss O’Riordan mean to be deliberately unkind, or was she simply a steam roller, flattening people into the most useful shape for her own ends? Even Cathleen’s tragedy was now to be utilized.
“Could I live with my conscience, he said.” Miss O’Riordan was off on another exploration of her private thoughts. “I told him my conscience was as much my own affair as my stomach and liver were, and they were all in good working order. Let him look to his own, I said.”
“Aunt Tilly, who are you talking about?”
Aunt Tilly gave one of Kitty’s hands a sharp slap.
“It’s none of your business. I can’t recount all my quarrels to you. I’m a famous quarreller, Mrs. Lamb. I draw the line only at being cursed. That, I confess, I find distressing, especially from someone to whom I’ve behaved generously.”
“You mean the workman at the orphanage, Miss O’Riordan?” Cathleen had taken her cue from Kitty and realized that the old lady expected replies to her statements, even if one got one’s hands slapped, like a child, for one’s efforts.
“Yes, I do. He’d take the roof off the poor children’s heads. ‘I must have more money,’ he said. ‘Or I’ll leave the rain to pour in.’ And then he has the nerve to blame it on my conscience! What do you think of that!”
For no reason at all, Cathleen was thinking of the words in that carelessly dropped letter this morning.
You can’t kill the golden goose… The fantastic thought had come to her that they might have referred to Miss O’Riordan
. But that was making the long arm of coincidence too long altogether. There were three million people in Ireland, and no doubt a great many of them indulged in passionate quarrels. They were a warm-hearted, passionate race. Take Miss O’Riordan alone, with her generous interest in orphans. She was willing to go to endless trouble for them, and even get herself cursed, though no doubt a little intervention from her priest would solve that latter problem.
Nevertheless, in spite of the view she got in the driving mirror of Aunt Tilly’s long indignant face, she had the strangest feeling that the old lady was romancing, that there was no workman repairing the roof at the orphanage, that the curse had been for something else…
“You’d better know, Mrs. Lamb,” Miss O’Riordan went on, “that the O’Riordan family has always been a target for gossip and scandal, and we’re no more kindly treated in the twentieth century than we were in the eighteenth. That’s why I want to write this family history. It will be strong meat. From Patrick O’Riordan who was hanged by the British for sedition to my own brother Patrick murdered by the Black and Tans. Quite apart from all the romantic scandals, of course. My great-grandmother eloped in her stockinged feet—lost a shoe running down the stairs. There’s rich material for you. Kitty, if you persist in looking so shocked I’ll send you back to the nursery where you belong. Sometimes I doubt if you’re an O’Riordan at all. You’re all your mother, and how Patrick could have married that wishy washy English girl—All right, child, I don’t mean to hurt you. It’s not your fault. I only thank heaven Liam and Rory got good Irish eyes, and not those pale blue orbs the majority of the English have.”
At that witticism Miss O’Riordan threw back her head and gave her great shout of laughter.
Cathleen couldn’t help saying, “Pale blue isn’t such a common colour in England. My own eyes are green.”
“That’s beside the point, Mrs. Lamb. You’re not an O’Riordan.”
Nevertheless, Cathleen was aware that she was being stared at in an assessing and not completely approving way. Miss O’Riordan was having second thoughts about her new secretary. It seemed that her own personality was the only one permitted around. Other people’s had to be subdued. Like Kitty’s, if the undersized little creature had ever had one.
Loughneath Castle lay a short distance from the little town of Loughneath. Here the country had changed. Grey stone walls surrounded the fields, there were rocky outcrops, gorse, moorland, cloud shadows, and goats tethered on the roadside.
Gateposts topped by crouching leopards and a curving elm-bordered drive led up to the castle. The parkland and sloping lawns were beautiful, but the castle itself was a great disappointment. Only one crumbling tower remained of the original structure. The rest was Georgian, being little more than a country house built in two wings. It was not even particularly large, although Miss O’Riordan said that one wing was shut up. The tower alone gave the building its right to be called a castle.
“We’re not rich,” Miss O’Riordan said. “We have almost no servants. Mary Kate and Patsy have been with us thirty years. Otherwise we have a woman from the village, occasionally, and Kitty and I do the rest. I’ll tell you, I’m looking to that book to make some money. And it will. If I haven’t spent the earnings long before I’ve made them. I’m a great spender.” Miss O’Riordan gave her raucous laugh again, then said quite kindly, “You’ve driven very well, Mrs. Lamb. You’ve not given me a quaint: Well, here we are, and there’s Liam waiting.”
The sight of the man standing in the arched doorway made Cathleen’s heart stop. For a moment he had a strange look of Jonathon.
Then she realized she was being fanciful, perhaps merely overtired, for when she came close to him there was no look of Jonathon at all, except the way his hair grew back from his high forehead in a peak. Perhaps a little in the way he smiled courteously and sympathetically.
“Aunt Tilly! Kitty! You’re late. You must be tired. And I see you’ve brought the new secretary.”
“Well, Liam,” said Aunt Tilly briskly. “We’re not tired in the least.” She spoke for all of them indiscriminately. “Yes, this is Mrs. Lamb. My nephew Liam, Mrs. Lamb.”
Liam held out his hand. It was obvious he wasn’t going to ignore her as Rory had. His eyes were warm and interested.
“Mrs. Lamb?” The question in his voice was just discernible.
“She’s a widow,” said Aunt Tilly briefly. “Where’s Patsy? Tell him to get our bags in. And I hope you told Mary Kate to put dinner back half an hour.”
“I did, Aunt Tilly.” Liam took her arm and led her down the wide hall. Here was the affection that the old lady had not given Rory, nor had Rory returned. “And you? You got all your business done?”
Miss O’Riordan shook off Liam’s arm.
“I did, of course. Didn’t you expect me to?”
She sank into one of the winged chairs, stretching out her legs abandonedly.
“The devil take them all! Sister Mary Martha, the orphans, the scroungers, the hangers-on. Is Rory home?”
“Hours ago,” said Liam. “He’s been hay-making.”
“He has the soul of a peasant,” Aunt Tilly said disgustedly. “Well, what are you staring at, Mrs. Lamb?”
Cathleen had been looking with interest at the square panelled hall. The fireplace of honey-coloured marble was magnificent. So was the dark carved ceiling. But the carpets and curtains were worn, faded and threadbare, the velvet rubbed away from the chairbacks. On the walls hung three portraits of three young men. She recognized two of them, the black-browed Rory and the finer more sensitive face of Liam. Everything about Rory was a little larger than life, Cathleen thought, even the bold stare of his black eyes. But Liam looked into the distance, dreamy and introspective.
The third face was alike and yet unlike. Cathleen thought it must be that of the father of the two boys, Patrick O’Riordan who had died fighting the Black and Tans.
“That’s Shamus,” said Kitty, at her side. “My eldest brother, Shamus.”
“I didn’t know you had another brother.”
“He’s dead.”
All at once Cathleen was aware of the three pairs of eyes on her, Miss O’Riordan’s staring beneath drooping lids, Liam’s deep-set blue ones looking at her interestedly but somehow watchfully, and Kitty’s enormous empty ones, the colour of rain-washed sky.
Were they all wondering what she would say because she had just heard that a man as young and virile as Shamus was now nothing but a portrait on the wall?
But people died every day.
“He must have been—quite young,” she said.
“He was twenty-nine,” said Miss O’Riordan dispassionately. “His death was an accident. Kitty, take Mrs. Lamb up to her room.”
“I will, Aunt Tilly.”
Cathleen followed the small limping figure of Kitty up the wide polished stairs.
“Why isn’t your portrait in the hall?” she asked.
“Mine!” she said scornfully.
She resumed her limping walk, like that of a lamed bird. She said no more. The scorn in her voice had been comment enough.
The room into which she took Cathleen was at the end of a long corridor. It was a large high-ceilinged room with long windows that looked over the garden and beyond to the wild, empty country, both beautiful and melancholy. But the room itself, with its sparse and worn furnishings, showed again the austerity that prevailed in the house. The brocade curtains were frayed, the matching bedspread rubbed so thin that in places it was in holes, the Chinese hand-painted wallpaper with its delicate design of birds and flowers was tarnished and faded. There was parquet flooring and one Persian rug, its colours dim. The bed of carved oak was magnificent. In it, Cathleen thought, she would feel like a banished queen.
“My room is just down the passage,” Kitty was saying. “The bathroom’s opposite. There’s only hot water in the evening when Patsy has had the boiler going.”
“Thank you,” said Cathleen. “I don’t want to get lost. Te
ll me what the other rooms are.”
Kitty, in her expressionless way that at the moment was neither friendly nor unfriendly, went into the passage and pointed to the door at the far end.
“That’s Aunt Tilly’s room. It’s the master bedroom. But Liam and Rory don’t want it, of course. They sleep on the floor above, and there are other rooms up there, too.” Oddly, Kitty seemed to have hesitated. She went on quickly, “The other rooms on this floor are guest rooms except the one next Aunt Tilly’s where she keeps all her old clothes. We don’t use the west wing at all. Mary Kate and Patsy have their own rooms next to the kitchen. I expect Aunt Tilly will want you to work mostly in the library. It’s on the left of the hall. We usually have a drink there before dinner. Come down when you’re ready.”
Had the dead Shamus slept in the master bedroom? Cathleen didn’t know why that thought came to her. She didn’t know why she felt it would give Miss Matilda O’Riordan great satisfaction to occupy the most important room in the house. She supposed Miss O’Riordan was Loughneath Castle, as far as she was concerned. But no doubt further acquaintance with Rory would correct that impression.
She went back into her room and presently an undersized man with a lumpy face, and wearing a tweed cap which he didn’t trouble to remove indoors, came in with her bag.
“There you are, miss,” he said. “I hope you’ll be liking it here. You’ll find it a bit quiet, maybe. Only them squawking crows. I’ll take a gun to them one day, so I will. Bejasus, there’s me missus calling and me not gone more’n a minute.”
He bobbed away before Cathleen had time to speak.
She unpacked quickly, and changed from her suit into a dress. She was suddenly too tired to make any great effort over dinner this evening. She almost wanted to look unattractive. She hadn’t been prepared for either Liam or Rory.