An Embarrassment of Riches (24 page)

He shot him a glance and saw Alexander's face tighten before he said with a slight shrug of a shoulder and apparent disinterest, ‘As you wish. I will meet you here tomorrow morning at ten o'clock.'

It was a dismissal and the most curt goodbye from a groom to his bride on the eve of their wedding that Captain Neills had ever heard, or ever hoped to hear.

Even Maura was slightly disconcerted and he again came to her aid, saying kindly, ‘Second-Lieutenant Harringway will escort you back to steerage, Miss Sullivan.'

‘Thank you.' Maura looked across at Alexander expectantly. Surely he would want to speak to her alone for a few moments? He didn't move and didn't look at her. He was staring at the porthole beyond the captain's desk, deep in thought, his eyes almost blind with pain.

She said awkwardly, ‘Goodbye, Captain. Goodbye, Father Mulcahy.'

She paused, looking again in Alexander's direction. It was unthinkable to say, ‘Goodbye, Alexander', when she had never, as yet, addressed him by his Christian name. It was equally unthinkable to address him as ‘Mr Karolyis', in front of the man who was arranging for them to marry, and the man who was to perform the ceremony.

Deeply unhappy she turned and left the room. When would they be able to talk to each other? Surely he must be as curious about her, and her background, as she was about him? Perhaps he would follow her from the room. Perhaps they would talk on the second-class deck as they had done yesterday.

The door behind her remained closed. No footsteps followed in her wake. She tried to conquer her disappointment by telling herself that she was to blame. He had desired that she move into first-class accommodation and if she had done so they could have talked on the first-class deck or in the first-class lounge. As it was, by electing to remain in steerage, she had made it impossible for any such conversations to take place.

Her return to her own quarters was met with a silence that was becoming increasingly hostile. Emigrants weren't invited by the captain to have a few words with him. Emigrants didn't have nobs shinning down stanchions on to steerage deck-space in order that they could pay their respects. Something funny was going on and because they were unsure as to what it was, they avoided, her with an instinct ages old.

As she sat for the rest of the day in lonely isolation, the irony was not lost on Maura. She had elected to stay with her fellows in steerage because she had felt a sense of loyalty towards them. It was now obvious that her sense of loyalty was not reciprocated and that she had turned her back on the blissful comfort and privacy of a first-class cabin for no very good reason.

Only when Second-Lieutenant Harringway appeared again early next morning, an ice-blue silk garment over his arm, a posy of artificial flowers in his hand, did the atmosphere change.

‘God save us, and what's happening now?' someone declared, voicing the mystification of every woman and child present.

When the officer had handed over the garment and posy to Maura and hastily made his retreat, they swarmed around her, their comments caustic, certain that she had been prostituting herself and that the dress and flowers were payment for services she had rendered.

‘It's a sin and a shame! It's a bloody disgrace!' someone cried out in Irish.

Maura shook her head, determined not to have the most incredible, the most wonderful day of her life spoilt by smutty misunderstandings.

‘I'm to be married this morning,' she said, lapsing into the tongue of her childhood.

They were immediately silenced, not so much by her words as by her country Gaelic.

‘And who is the groom?' a voice ventured when they had recovered from their surprise.

‘Why, it's the captain to be sure,' someone else riposted.

There was much laughter and Maura said, almost as if she could barely believe it herself: ‘I'm to marry the young man who shinned down from the upper deck yesterday.'

Exclamations of, ‘I told you so'ran through the crush pressing for a clearer view of the blue silk garment and the artificial flowers.

‘Is it runnin'away together the two of you are then?' a woman at the forefront of the crowd asked.

Maura knew exactly what scenario her questioner was imagining. An Irish girl in service. The son of the house. It was the only obvious explanation for her ability to speak English with an aristocratic accent and for her to be marrying a man travelling first-class.

‘Yes,' she said, knowing that no-one would believe the truth even if she told them it.

Immediately she was deluged with wishes of good luck. The wedding gown was reverently admired. Although there was no privacy in which she could change, it no longer seemed to matter. Willing hands helped her out of her blackberry-blue dress and into her borrowed, ice-blue wedding-gown.

Maura held her breath as it slithered over her head. Would it fit? Would the bodice be too low? Would any of her eager helpers accidentally soil it?

There was no mirror but immediately the gown had settled on her hips she knew that it flattered her to perfection. Although the second-lieutenant had shrunk from the task of carrying a crinoline hoop into steerage with him, the gown had a stiff underskirt and the skirt fell, bell-like, to her ankles. The sleeves were full and puffed, tightening narrowly below the elbow. The neckline was fashionably low, but not so low as to cause her embarrassment.

She had brushed her hair until it shone and instead of wearing it in a thick coil at the nape of her neck had twisted it into a high, fashionable French chignon.

‘You'll do him proud, Maura,' Rosie O'Hara said to her admiringly.

‘She looks like a princess, and isn't that the truth?' another one declared, as proud as if the vision were of her own doing.

There were white roses and gardenias in the artificial posy and Maura plucked a gardenia free and tucked it into the pleat of her chignon.

Having given her time to change into her borrowed bridal finery, the second-lieutenant reappeared. His instructions were to escort her to where the captain and Father Mulcahy and her groom were waiting for her. He had been sailing the Atlantic for nearly ten years and he could never remember being assigned a more bizarre task. Weddings had taken place before aboard the
Scotia
both in first-class and in steerage, but never before had a first-class passenger married a steerage emigrant. It was beyond belief. Fantastic. Especially when the first-class passenger was a man whose name was a byword for unbelievable riches.

He looked at her and stopped short. Emigrant she might be, but she was certainly no common one. Like Captain Neills, he was certain that there was far more to the wedding about to take place than met the eye. Gravely he proffered her his gold-braided sleeved arm. With exquisite dignity, she took it. All around them in the gloom was the most unimaginable stench and squalor and like creatures from another world they traversed it and left it behind them.

As they walked the companion-ways towards the for'ard part of the ship he didn't speak to her, because he didn't know what he could possibly say.

She, too, was silent, her heart beating in sharp, slamming strokes that she could feel even in her fingertips. Was she really doing this? Was she really about to marry a man she knew nothing whatsoever about? She remembered the pain in his eyes. The pain she was confident she could ease. Her fingers tightened imperceptibly on the officer's arm. If only Isabel was with her. If only it was Kieron at her side, about to give her away. Even better, if only it had been Lord Clanmar.

They were at the door emblazoned by Captain Neills'name in brass lettering. Perhaps he wouldn't be inside the room. Perhaps Captain Neills would be waiting to tell her that no wedding would take place; that it had all been a misunderstanding; that Alexander was sick and not responsible for his actions. The second-lieutenant knocked on the door. Captain Neills opened it. Beyond him she could see Father Mulcahy, his stole around his neck. And Alexander.

He turned as she entered the room. At the expression on his face she was filled with a dizzying moment of pure elation. Whatever he had expected, it had not been a bride in a shimmering, ice-blue silk wedding-gown; a bride with a posy of roses and gardenias in her hands and a gardenia in her hair. For one brief, precious moment she could see her own beauty reflected back at her in his eyes. He was dumbfounded by her. Dazzled by her. And then a shutter came down over his eyes and he turned away from her, facing Father Mulcahy.

With the blood pounding in her ears and her heart racing, she took her place at his side, confident of the future. Confident that she could make him love her as she already loved him.

Alexander stared stony-eyed at the little priest, fighting to keep his emotions under control. He was marrying. He was about to utter all the vows he had so long ago determined he would utter only to Genevre. He had thought his heart incapable of feeling any further grief. He had been wrong. As the priest began to pray in Latin he felt that he was being crucified. Why couldn't it have been Genevre at his side? Genevre with her impish eyes and soft laugh. Genevre who was the other half of his very self.

Reverting to English Father Mulcahy proclaimed, ‘I join you together in marriage, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.'

A pulse throbbed at the corner of Alexander's jaw. It wasn't Genevre. Genevre was dead. All that he could do for Genevre now was to make his father pay for his cruelty towards her. Not for the first time he wondered how she could have believed the lies that his father had spread. He clenched his hands at his side, his nails digging deep into his palms. She had believed them because they were the talk of New York. According to Charlie, Leonard Jerome had heard of his supposed forthcoming marriage at the Union Club. She had believed them because she had never received a word from him to the contrary.

Father Mulcahy began to sprinkle them with water.

He wondered if his father had opened and read the letters he had so obviously purloined. He wondered if he had kept them. If he had then it was still possible that he, Alexander, might yet read them. At the thought of reading words that Genevre had written to him when he first left New York – and the words she no doubt had written when she first had heard the rumours that he was to marry, the blood pounded in his ears. How would he be able to bear it? How was he ever going to be able to bear living without her?

The priest was holding a prayer-book and Captain Neills placed a ring and silver shilling on it.

He didn't trust himself to look at the girl at his side. In the instant that she had entered the room all his niggling doubts had roared back at him, magnified to such an extent that it had taken him all his will-power not to call the whole thing off then and there. She had borne very little resemblance to her fellows in steerage even before her change of dress, which is why he had been initially attracted to her. Now, however, in her obviously borrowed silk gown, she looked no more an Irish peasant than Genevre had looked. Which was not what he had had in mind at all.

Following Father Mulcahy's instructions he offered her the gold and silver, saying tautly: ‘With this ring I thee wed, this gold and silver I give thee, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.'

Why
hadn't
he called it off? He wasn't sure. Probably because the prospect of going through the whole rigmarole with another steerage passenger was too wearisome to contemplate. He remembered the stench of the emigrants' crowded quarters and suppressed a shudder. The real reason was that he couldn't face the horror of consummating his marriage with a woman smelling of stale sweat and peat and bog. The girl at his side was at least clean. And personable.

Awkwardly he placed the ring on her left thumb, moving it from finger to finger at Father Mulcahy's bidding. She had well-shaped hands, long and narrow with beautiful almond-shaped nails. For the first time since the ceremony had begun he looked across at her. She was more than personable. Although caught up in a devastatingly fashionable chignon, her shining black hair was obviously long and heavy and lustrous. He wondered how long. He wondered how she would look with it unpinned. In profile her features were a perfectly carved cameo, her lashes a thick sweep against her pale skin, the corner of her mouth soft and full. Although he knew that he would never again respond physically to another woman as he had done to Genevre, he had to admit grudgingly that she was a beauty.

‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,' he repeated after the priest. With a final ‘Amen'he placed the ring on the girl's wedding finger.

Her own responses had been uttered in a pleasing, low voice. For the first time he wondered about her speech. None of Powerscourt's household staff had been Irish. All had been engaged in England and consequently he was not familiar with the accent that so many of Powerscourt's guests, at one time or another, had mocked. Certainly there didn't seem to be anything about his new bride's speech that could be easily mocked. There was a slight lilt to it, but it was an attractive lilt, not coarse or raucous. He remembered the catcalls he had received when he had shinned down the stanchion on to the steerage deck. Those voices had been thick with an accent that had rendered their speech almost incomprehensible. He wondered why she spoke so differently. Perhaps there were vast differences in accents from one part of Ireland to another, just as in America there were differences of accent between North and South, between the educated and the uneducated …

‘You may now kiss the bride.'

With his thoughts rudely interrupted Alexander stared at Father Mulcahy.

‘You may now kiss the bride,' Father Mulcahy repeated, wondering how much of the marriage service Alexander had heard; wondering if he was quite right in the head.

Alexander had no intention of doing any such thing. ‘Thank you,' he said stiffly to the priest, shaking him by the hand, avoiding all eye contact with the girl at his side. He tried to remember what her name was. Moira? Maura?