Another Kind of Life (24 page)

Constance MacBride was much more substantial than my shadowy recollection of her. The intervening years had not been kind: she seemed to have swollen, her flesh bulging against the severe lines
of her clothing. My youthful imagination savoured the image of seams straining to splitting point, stitches exploding, white flesh spilling everywhere in a most unbecoming fashion. Even her hat was
enormous – a most impressive creation of plumage and flowers, vastly superior to Mama’s; but her gown was suited to mourning. I wondered who had died. Months later, I found out from her
daughter Emily that it was her husband, who had passed away some twenty-five years earlier. Constance MacBride claimed that she properly respected his memory by never abandoning her widow’s
weeds. Emily said that that was arrant nonsense; it was just her mother’s way of frightening away men, of terrifying any potential suitor into silence. I couldn’t imagine anyone
fighting for Mrs MacBride’s hand, not even in her younger days. Wealthy she may have been, but, apart from her lack of physical charms, she had an air about her that discouraged intimacy,
that proclaimed her a woman sternly convinced of her own superiority. I felt instinctively that she was quite repellent enough: she didn’t need the mourning clothes.

She bustled about that day of our arrival, shooing us away off the platform as though we were ill-behaved hens. She had a carriage waiting under the porte cochère, right at the station
entrance. Jaunting cars were lined up all along Great Victoria Street, waiting patiently for business. Their drivers were wreathed in clouds of tobacco-smoke, jesting with each other in accents
that were about to become familiar to me again. The air of activity everywhere was intense, as was the heat. Busy, purposeful men hurried hither and thither, the enormous clock above us seeming to
measure out the minutes of their important days. I wondered where they were all rushing to.

Charles helped us all to ascend the carriage. First his mother, then Mama, then Hannah and May, then me, and finally Papa. Nobody spoke to me, and Hannah would not meet my eye. The others
conversed in a polite, desultory fashion about the journey, the weather, the crowded Belfast streets. I can remember thinking how everyone knew the reason we had come, and yet deemed it improper to
speak of it. With a child’s logic, I wondered why a wedding was an indecent topic for a carriage – surely it was as acceptable there as anywhere else? After all, wasn’t that the
very reason we had all travelled to Belfast together? I had plenty of time to ponder this, and many other matters, during the lengthy afternoon I was about to spend inside the MacBrides’
unbearably hot and overstuffed drawing room.

M
ARY
HAD
LITTLE
difficulty in getting used to her duties at 12 Fortwilliam Park. She welcomed the
nightly exhaustion, the mind-numbing torpor induced by ceaseless physical work. She fell into her bed each night with no thought for anything but sleep. Her hands gradually grew tougher and
dirtier, ingrained with coal-dust and black lead from cleaning the range. Her mind learned to fill itself with thoughts of the next job: washing-up after breakfast, cleaning the floor, tidying up
in expectation of Madam’s daily visit to the kitchen to give her orders. Then came cleaning the bedrooms and emptying the chamber pots, washing the varnished paintwork with tea-water,
brushing damp tea leaves into the carpets, stoking the range and the fires. Mary was grateful for the rigour of this new existence. She was fed, watered and housed. If she didn’t receive
kindness, at least she learned to be content with indifference: it meant that as long as she did her work, she didn’t have to spend her life looking over her shoulder.

Two years after her arrival in Fortwilliam Park, Mary came home one Sunday evening to great excitement in the kitchen. Cook and Miss Mulqueen were talking animatedly, their
eyes bright, faces rosy. Two sherry schooners stood empty on the table between them.

Miss Mulqueen beamed at Mary as she propped her dripping umbrella beside the range.

‘What is it?’ asked Mary.

‘Madam is in the family way again – the wee one is due to be born sometime in October.’

They both nodded at her, looking as self-important and pleased with themselves as if they had just announced the arrival of the Messiah. For a brief moment, Mary thought how sad it was, that
these two women regarded the event as though they were family. As it was, those who lived below stairs rarely saw the children. They were Nanny’s preserve, and she guarded them jealously.
Mary thought privately that Mrs Long was a little afraid of her. Stout, plain and devoted, Nanny ruled the roost. In the mornings Madam would hand the children over to the schoolroom and the
strangely timid governess; in the afternoons they were all Nanny’s, for long walks in the local park, or doing a carefully planned variety of activities with a view to improving their little
minds.

The first time Mary had seen the governess, Miss Taylor, she knew her to be a bitterly disappointed woman. Her chin was sharp, the corners of her mouth turned down, creased like parentheses. Her
hands were large and impatient. Perhaps she was always worrying about something, or perhaps life simply hadn’t fulfilled its promise. Mary sometimes thought about her, or Nanny, or Cook on
the winter mornings when she got up as early as five-thirty to clean the grates, open the flues and set the fires going again. Sorry for yer troubles, Mary would think grimly, scraping the tarry
residue from the inside of the flue, her hands numb with cold and effort: life left an awful lot of us behind when it handed out its parcels of good fortune.

Mary often felt sorry for the children: their lives seemed to be a constant round of duties. She had never seen them play ball in the garden, chase the dog or hug a brother or sister . . . She
stopped herself.

Miss Mulqueen and Cook were still looking at her. Maybe they were right to be joyful: good or bad, this was as close as they’d ever come to their own hearth and home – as close as
she’d ever come, too. Hadn’t she passed up all opportunity of family, of children – hadn’t that been her choice? She tried to appear enthusiastic. Luckily, they
weren’t all that interested in her reaction.

‘Didn’t you use to sew?’

Cook asked the question, looking over at Mary with curiosity. Miss Mulqueen was impatient now, her eyes eager.

‘Aye,’ Mary said slowly.

She wasn’t sure what she was letting herself in for. Miss Mulqueen clasped her hands delightedly.

‘I shall tell Madam at once. She asked me to find someone to prepare a new layette for the baby. Would you be able to do that?’

‘I would, surely.’

Mary began to like the idea: perhaps if she were to have such new duties, old ones such as emptying the chamber pots or stoking the range or carrying coal could be done by a step-boy.

‘I’ll tell Madam.’

Miss Mulqueen was gone like a shot. Cook looked put-out. Perhaps she was cross that the housekeeper had stolen her thunder; perhaps she was feeling left out; or perhaps she simply wanted more
sherry. Mary had often seen the gleam that was in her eye now, the high spot of colour on each cheek. She would never have put two and two together until today.

The older woman stood up from the table now, her vast skirts in full sail like a Spanish galleon. She limped her way over to one of the cupboards which was always kept locked. She produced the
bottle of sherry and a new glass. She poured for Mary, with a slightly unsteady hand.

‘You’re a good wee girl,’ she said, not lifting her eyes from the bottle.

Mary was dumbfounded. She felt foolish as her eyes began to fill. It was the first expression of affection that she had had from anyone since she had refused Myles and left Carrick Hill. Cecilia
appeared insistently in front of her, young, childlike, as she was before the mill unleashed its terrors. Tears began to roll slowly down Mary’s cheeks. Cook was startled. Then her puffy face
seemed to soften.

‘Sit down now, and get that into ye.’

Mary sat and sipped, feeling the warmth grow in her stomach. She was disturbed by this return of feeling. For two years now, she had experienced existence in its simplest animal forms of work,
food and shelter. The young Cecilia had hardly crossed her mind. She was there, always, in the background, almost hidden among the deepest bits of Mary’s life. But the
live
Cecilia had
always been absent; only her damaged and dying self ever nudged its way into Mary’s consciousness. It had been easy enough to scrub it away on the front step, or beat it out of the dusty
carpets. This was different. It was as though Cecilia had come back to demand her rightful place in her sister’s memory.

Mary didn’t know whether to be glad or frightened.

S
OPHIA
THOUGHT
ABOUT
it for a long time before she went knocking on Hannah’s door. She was never
quite sure these days what to expect from her eldest daughter. She had become fiercely private over the last several months, withdrawing from all family occasions as soon as it was polite to do so,
giving others the minimum of herself. A calculated amount, Sophia had often reflected, never enough to please, but never so little that offence could reasonably be taken. Even when she was there,
she had developed the capacity to detach herself from everybody, with an air just this side of aloofness. Her eyes would look dimmer, somehow, their usual blue light suffused with grey. She seemed
to have little time even for her sisters. Sophia was aware, particularly, of how much Eleanor missed her. May was much more separate, always had been. But the youngest girl had taken to wandering
around the house like a pale, lost soul, afraid, it seemed, even to touch the piano.

Sophia had taken care not to cross Hannah; she knew that the girl needed time to grow into the life that had been shaped for her. After his initial anger and impatience, Edward seemed to regard
the matter as closed. He was simply not prepared to discuss it. This had more to do, Sophia was sure, with his own never-acknowledged sense of shame than with his daughter’s defiance. His
only response was that Hannah would do as she was told. He would grant her a little time only to learn acceptance, to submit to the will of her parents. The decision was made, finished with.

The dark burn of Hannah’s anger and contempt had eased somewhat since their visit to the MacBrides in Belfast, Sophia was sure of that. Her daughter no longer avoided her eye, or left the
room at once, shrouded in resentment, whenever her mother entered. In some strange way, Sophia realized, Hannah regarded what she saw as her mother’s betrayal of her as a worse and more
heinous sin than anything her father had ever done. Sophia had reflected long and bitterly on the irony of her daughter’s outrage. She, Sophia, had done only what was expedient: none of this
would have been necessary but for Edward. She sighed impatiently, stopping herself from going down that well-travelled road again: Hannah’s words still kept her awake at night, cutting into
her heart with the accuracy and precision of the surgeon’s knife.

I hope you got a good price
.

Once the house had settled into its night-time quiet, the secret creakings and sighings finally stilled, Sophia put her needlework to one side and climbed the stairs to the first-floor landing
and her daughter’s bedroom. She knocked on the door, more smartly than she had intended, and waited. She felt the first faint stirrings of panic. Now that she was here, what was she going to
say? What words could she possibly use to bridge the gap between the two of them? Even if Hannah no longer hated her, she had certainly kept herself aloof from any of Sophia’s recent attempts
to console her, to mother her. She felt her heartbeat quicken. She tried to breathe more deeply. No matter what, her daughter needed her now, even if she refused to know it. She steadied herself,
comforted by her sense of duty. Who else could explain to her daughter what would be expected of her, demanded of her as a married woman? She knew that some, including Edward, regarded this as a
husband’s, rather than a mother’s duty. But she wasn’t convinced. Her own experience had taught her otherwise. Nevertheless, she was filled with sudden misgiving, and decided to
turn away, to think about it again more carefully, to come back when she was more prepared, perhaps even more sure of a welcome. She needed to wait until courage came to her once more.

But Hannah opened her door.

‘Mother!’

She was surprised to see Sophia standing there, looking uncertain, her hands clasped in the way that Hannah had come to associate with anxiety. She looked altogether different from her usual
daily self.

‘May I come in?’

She was here now, and would do her best.

Hannah opened her door wider. She felt a sudden sympathy for her mother, something she had not felt for some time for either of her parents. For months, her anger had burned brightly; there had
been reminders everywhere of her thwarted ambition, her stunted talent. She hadn’t been able to bear even the sight of the piano, or the sound of anyone else playing it. She had torn down the
stairs one Sunday afternoon in a fury and dragged Eleanor by the hair off the piano stool, enraged by the child’s playing. It was only when she saw the young girl sprawled on the floor, her
small body made almost comical by the ungainly tangle of legs and waving arms, that Hannah’s anger had deflated. She had been shocked by the violence of her emotions, appalled at her
treatment of gentle Eleanor. Her youngest sister had said nothing, nothing at all. She had sobbed into her sleeve, resisting Hannah’s remorseful embrace, refusing to meet her eyes. But all
that had been long before Belfast.

‘May I sit?’

‘Of course.’

Hannah was puzzled by her mother’s diffidence. She waited for the older woman to speak, content to sit in silence. She knew that this had something to do with Charles.

‘I wanted to speak to you about your wedding.’

Hannah nodded. She was to be married in less than two months. Her mother and Constance MacBride had agreed that it was no longer fashionable to believe in long engagements.