Call Home the Heart (12 page)

 

 

As she drew closer, however, she could see moss and lichens
clambering up the dingy walls. In some places she wasn't even
certain the roof was still on. The stable and outbuildings were also
dilapidated. The whole house and its surrounds gave Muireann the
impression of something from a Gothic horror novel: grim, deserted,
isolated.

 

 

"You'll have to stay with us at our cottage for the night. It will
be freezing inside the house, and I must say I've not had much time
to look through it since I got back a few weeks ago. I've done
nothing to the estate except battle with creditors because Augustine
didn't leave me any instructions before he left for Scotland."

 

 

"There's no need to apologize, Lochlainn. I'm sure you've done your
best," Muireann replied in an even tone, trying to conceal the fact
that her heart had sunk into her boots. "Do we at least have lots of
firewood?" she asked with a shiver.

 

 

"I got plenty chopped when the weather was fine last week, so we
should be in good shape for a while. There's also lots of turf."

 

 

"And where are the estate papers?"

 

 

"In the study, and in the estate office. But it is too late to start
working on that now! You must be exhausted."

 

 

"I'm fine, really. Can you show me where the office is?"

 

 

"This way," he indicated, lifting the bags, and leading her around
to the back of the house.

 

 

The rusty old key turned in the equally rusty lock, and he ushered
Muireann in. She looked at the mountain of papers and said, "I think
I see what you mean."

 

 

Lochlainn put his arm around her shoulders. "Why don't you just come
home with me now and meet Ciara?"

 

 

"I'll just take some of these ledgers to read by the fire, if I
may."

 

 

"You may do as you like, Muireann. You're the owner now," Lochlainn
reminded her.

 

 

Once again, she got a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

 

 

Lochlainn's cottage was near the stable block, a small three-room
structure divided into a large kitchen and living area with two
reasonably sized bedrooms at one end.

 

 

Lochlainn's sister Ciara was immediately at the door to greet her
brother. After patting him on the shoulder in a stiff way, she shook
hands with Muireann quite formally.

 

 

Ciara was a very small, reserved woman, with dark brown hair and
green eyes. At thirty-four, she was two years younger than
Lochlainn, but she looked even older, and her rough hands testified
to the hard work she had carried out over the years. She was cordial
and polite, but not friendly. She eyed Muireann with obvious
curiosity and mistrust. Lochlainn smiled in a forced manner as he
introduced Muireann.

 

 

"This is Muireann Graham Caldwell, Augustine's wife."

 

 

Ciara slammed down the bowl she had been spooning potatoes into, and
stared at both of them, shock etched on her sharp, weary features.

 

 

"The landlord's married?"

 

 

"The news is more astonishing than that. Augustine is dead. I've
asked Muireann to stay with us until we can get the house in better
order for her."

 

 

Ciara continued to stare, and at last she reached for Muireann's
cloak and began to make her feel more welcome.

 

 

"You poor child! But how? I don't understand . . ."

 

 

"Please, Ciara, not now," Lochlainn urged futilely.

 

 

"No, Lochlainn, tell her. Or better still, I will. There was a gun
accident in the hotel in Dublin and he was killed. We buried him
yesterday, and came up here."

 

 

"My goodness, how horrible!" Ciara shook her head, as she tried to
recover herself.

 

 

She moved over to the fireplace and uncovered a small black
pot-bellied cauldron. She divided the potatoes from it onto three
plates before opening another small pot hanging suspended over the
turf, and ladling some rabbit stew over them.

 

 

Lochlainn blushed at the simplicity of his cottage and the poor
fare. He was relieved to see that Muireann seemed to take no notice
and began to eat the food hungrily once she had said grace. At least
the cottage is clean, he thought to himself. All the same, he felt
completely inadequate.

 

 

"I shall move my things out of my room in a minute," he said. He put
another mouthful of the now seemingly tasteless stew into his mouth
and tried to swallow it.

 

 

"Don't be silly. I can sleep out here by the fire, or share with
Ciara. There's no need to put you out."

 

 

"But there's only one bed in my room," Ciara protested sullenly,
earning a sharp look from her brother.

 

 

"It doesn't matter. I can have a pallet on the floor," Muireann said
calmly.

 

 

"Muireann, you're an aristocratic lady. It's bad enough that you
have to stay here, but for you to sleep on the floor is
unthinkable," Lochlainn rasped, his color rising.

 

 

"Well, I've just thought of it, so that's what I shall do. Please,
Lochlainn, I thought we had this discussion last night and ironed
out the difficulties."

 

 

Lochlainn blushed at the recollection, and almost wished he could
contrive for them to share a bed again.

 

 

You mustn't think of it! he scolded himself roundly, and avoided
Muireann's amethyst glance.

 

 

He rose to take the bags into Ciara's room, and went out of the door
of the cottage, coming back a few minutes later with a mattress,
which he had fetched from the stables.

 

 

"This one is quite clean. I found it in the barn. It must have been
for the stable lad, but the last boy left before I arrived. I
suppose once most of the horses had gone, there was no point in
replacing him. So it's all yours."

 

 

"It will do perfectly well," Muireann said. She took one end and
helped him lay it down on the floor of the room, while Ciara fetched
some clean sheets out of the press.

 

 

"What did happen to the horses?" Muireann asked as she maneuvered
the mattress into a corner.

 

 

"I suspect Augustine must have sold them all to get the money to go
over to Scotland, but knowing the way the Caldwells liked to spend
money, it could have been for anything," Lochlainn speculated, the
disgust all too evident in his voice.

 

 

"And are there any other family, people who might be willing to help
Augustine's widow, if I appealed to their better sensibilities?"
Muireann asked.

 

 

Lochlainn's features clouded over with anger at Christopher's past
insult to him. "There's only his cousin Christopher, from the
neighboring estate Duchara. He's been in Europe on and off for quite
some time, or so I believe. He's as much of a spendthrift as
Augustine ever was."

 

 

Just then Ciara came into the room, and upon hearing her brother's
words, dropped the sheets and blankets she was carrying.

 

 

"What's the matter?" Lochlainn demanded impatiently, embarrassed at
his sister's clumsiness.

 

 

"N-n-nothing," she replied. "I was just careless, that's all."

 

 

"Really, Lochlainn, there's no harm done," Muireann said
reassuringly as she picked up the bed linen, while Ciara scurried
from the room.

 

 

"There now, you've hurt her feelings. And all because of me," she
accused Lochlainn angrily. "This can't be easy for her, you know.
I'm a total stranger taking over her home, after all."

 

 

"I know, I know. It's just that of late she acts so strangely
sometimes. She should have married, had children. It would have been
an outlet for all her, well, fussiness, her attention to details.
She likes everything to be perfect, you see, now more than ever."

 

 

"Well, perhaps the right man never asked her to marry him?" Muireann
said with a sharp look as she began to make up the bed quickly and
efficiently.

 

 

"That's just the point. She used to be very beautiful. In the last
three years she's changed so much, I barely recognized her when I
returned home. Plenty of men have asked her over the years, but
she's always said no. Even my best friend, Robert, who was the
blacksmith on the estate, asked her. She refused him and he went
away broken-hearted," Lochlainn revealed, shaking his head at the
waste of it all.

 

 

"And where is Robert now?" Muireann asked. She stooped to lay the
blankets down one by one, forming a cozy resting place for herself.

 

 

"I'm not sure. On one of the estates hereabouts. He moves around a
lot."

 

 

"We might use his services some time, if you can find him," Muireann
offered kindly.

 

 

"Well, we have few horses now, just the two farm animals for the
plough, but for repairs around the estate he would be excellent."

 

 

"Is he married?"

 

 

He shook his head. "No, he never wed."

 

 

Lochlainn disliked talking about his sister's odd behavior with an
outsider. Before Muireann could ask any more probing questions, he
went out into the kitchen and moved towards the fireplace. There he
filled the hot water bottles, and put one into each of the three
beds.

 

 

Muireann finished making her bed, and sat down with Lochlainn and
Ciara at the table again for a cup of tea. She could feel her head
getting heavy.

 

 

Lochlainn looked at her pale face, and tumbled hair, and suggested,
"Why don't you go to bed now?"

 

 

"No, no, I think I should look at these ledgers first," Muireann
said as she took her cup and went over to sit by the fire.

 

 

Lochlainn decided to leave her alone for a while to digest the
information in her own time. He went into his room to unpack his bag
and put away his things, while Ciara cleaned up the supper dishes.

 

 

She clattered them so loudly that Lochlainn occasionally looked out
to make sure she wasn't smashing ever bit of crockery they owned.
She was scrubbing at them so hard it was almost as though she were
trying to wash the floral patterns off each dish.

 

 

In the end he went over to the basin and, taking up a cloth, removed
the dishes one by one from his sister's hands. He dried them
thoroughly before putting them back in the oaken sideboard, which
was the most impressive piece of furniture in the room, though all
of them were of remarkable quality.

 

 

Muireann glanced up for a moment to look at the pair, and remarked,
"I must say, all of the furnishings are lovely here. Did your father
make them?"

 

 

"We never knew our father, or our mother. We lost them both when we
were very young," Lochlainn said shortly, in a tone which indicated
that she had blundered into an area of his life in which she was not
welcome.

 

 

"As for the furniture, I made it myself. I originally trained as a
carpenter, until I decided a proper school education was far more
important, and began to learn book-keeping and so on."

 

 

Ciara shot her brother a sharp look. Without a word to him or
Muireann, she went into her room and shut the door.

 

 

Muireann blushed. "I'm sorry, I had no idea." She turned her
attention back to the ledgers quickly when she saw Lochlainn's eyes
had grown as hard as granite.

 

 

He finished drying the dishes, all the while reproaching himself for
having been so rude to Muireann, and for having not revealed the
whole truth about his parents. He excused this omission by telling
himself that he didn't want her to think any less of him than she
already did as a result of the poverty of his existence. The word
bastard was such an ugly one . . .

 

 

But however hard he tried, he couldn't stay annoyed with her
blunder, and couldn't keep away from her. He was like a moth
compelled to hover around the candle flame. At length Lochlainn
approached the hearth and asked, "Can you make heads or tails out of
them?"

 

 

"Not quite yet, but I think I'm getting a pretty good idea of just
how bad things are," Muireann said, briefly glancing up from the
book.

 

 

"I think we're going to have to hurry up making sense of all this.
Once everyone knows Augustine is dead and that you're very young and
inexperienced, the creditors will be lining up on the avenue
screaming for payment," Lochlainn predicted.

 

 

Muireann shut the book with a snap, and returning to the table in
the center of the room, took up paper and pen.

 

 

"Unless I go see them first. I shall make a list of them tomorrow.
But first I shall have to write to my family to tell them the news,
and prevent them from coming here on the next boat."

 

 

"How do you rate your chances of success in fobbing off any of
them?"

 

 

Muireann smiled thinly. "I can be very persuasive when I wish to
be."

 

 

In the end she wrote a quite cheerful letter to her parents,
claiming that Augustine's family had welcomed her into their bosom
despite the tragedy, and that all the necessary formalities had been
arranged discreetly after the terrible accident.

 

 

She was stunned to find that the lies rolled onto the paper so
easily, but she knew she was fighting for her very survival. If a
few falsehoods here and there would help her, fine.