Cashelmara (70 page)

It took me two whole minutes before I could nerve myself to walk through the gilded gates across the courtyard and another two before I could steel myself to ring the front doorbell.

“Good morning to you,” I said to the butler, who was the blackest man I had ever seen—and the loftiest. “I’ll see Mr. Charles Marriott if you please.”

“Mr. Marriott,” said the butler, “is not at home.”

“Well, if it’s away from home he is,” I said, “I’ll wait. I have a letter for him from his sister, Lady de Salis, wife of Baron de Salis of Cashelmara, may the Virgin and the Holy Saints protect her.”

I thought I sounded most respectful and polite, but that cut no ice with him because he didn’t believe me. The next moment we were having a shouting match, and he was yelling at the footmen to throw me out. That was when Marriott turned up. Of course he’d been at home all the time. He came down the stairs and said, “Whitney, what the devil’s going on?” And when I had the chance to wave Sarah’s letter in his face he put out a soft white hand to steady the envelope so that he could see the handwriting.

After a long pause he said, “Thank you. I can see that this does come from my sister.” And he fished a dollar out of his pocket and held it out to me as casually as he might to a Bowery bummer.

“Begging your pardon, your honor,” I said, doing my best to keep my temper, “but I’m a friend of your sister’s, not just a messenger.”

He took another look at me—and I took another look at him.

He was in his mid-thirties, I reckoned, and I saw at once that he was the kind of man who lives indoors most of his life and would throw a fit if a trace of mud spattered his boots. There was a likeness in looks between him and Sarah, but you had to look hard to notice it. He had a similar long neck—it looked odd on a man—and those high cheekbones, but his eyes were a dark brown and his mouth was thin-lipped, and apart from some fairish hair dragged across his scalp he was as bald as a bantam’s egg. He spoke with a funny strangled sort of American accent, and later I realized he liked to use fancy language that made him sound as if he’d swallowed a dictionary. I found out later too that in addition to his fine expensive house he kept a fine expensive wife—though the wife was older than he was and frumpy too for all her fine clothes. But that didn’t surprise me. It wouldn’t be bothering Charles Marriott if his wife was unattractive, for to be sure he’d consider bedroom romps no more than a cheap sport for the uneducated masses.

We hated each other on sight.

“Who are you?” he said. “What is your name?”

“My name is Maxwell Drummond,” I said, and as always my name gave me confidence so that I found myself speaking up to him like an equal. “I’m a squireen and my lands lie about two miles east of Cashelmara.”

“My sister has never mentioned you.”

“Well, if it’s a mention you want,” I said, “why don’t you read her letter?”

I’ll say this for Charles Marriott: He was genuinely fond of Sarah in his own stuffy way, and once he had read her letter it was all I could do to stop him rushing over to Ireland on the next boat to rescue her. In fact he was so appalled by what he read that he completely forgot his distaste for me and hustled me into his study, where we could discuss the situation in privacy.

“The first thing you’d best realize,” I said, quite in command of the situation by this time, “is that you can’t go careering around Cashelmara like an elephant in a wheatfield. Sarah said I must be sure to make that clear to you. Mr. George de Salis did that and he’s now a dead man.”

“But I can’t believe a murder could go undetected in such a manner!”

“Why not?” I said. “It happens all the time in Ireland.”

“But—”

“Look, Mr. Marriott. Sarah wants to get away with all the children. If she tries to run away, MacGowan will bring her back and punish her because it’s in his interests—and Lord de Salis’s interests—to keep the marriage together. Lord de Salis wants to keep the children, and neither he nor MacGowan wants the world to know about their sodomy. So if Sarah goes she’s got to go with MacGowan’s permission, and the only way to get MacGowan’s permission is to provide her with a cast-iron excuse to go—which is where you come in. I don’t know just what she said in her letter, but—”

“Money. This man MacGowan’s greedy for money.” He still sounded dazed.

“So it’s money you have to dangle before him to lead him on. You have to write to your brother-in-law and—”

“Quite,” he said abruptly, and I saw he was remembering who we both were. “You may rest assured that I shall do whatever is necessary. I shall keep you informed.”

“Well, it’s not information I’m wanting at present,” I said smoothly “although I’m sure I shall be glad of it when it comes. I need money. I’ve spent my last penny in bringing your sister’s letter to you, and Sarah said you’d see I didn’t starve.” And when he started fishing in his pockets again I said, “Keep your charity, for I’m not a beggar and I don’t intend to be. Give me employment and I’ll fend for myself.”

He looked me up and down and I could almost hear him thinking, My God, what am I to do with him?

“Can you read and write?” he said doubtfully at last.

You Saxon son of a bitch, I thought, it’s easy to see you can trace your ancestry back to Cromwell.

“I went to the best school west of the Shannon,” I said, “and I completed my education at the Royal Agricultural College in Dublin.”

He gave a small cynical smile and said he could find me a clerical position at his house of business on Wall Street.

“Good,” I said. “I’ll take a month’s salary in advance, and maybe I’ll change my mind about the charity. How about two hundred dollars as a reward for my letter-carrying services?”

He stood up. “Look here, Drummond—”

“I’m thinking you’d better not be less than generous with me,” I said. “Sarah wouldn’t like it at all if she thought I was being treated as less than a friend of the family.”

I watched him turn a deep dull red. When he could speak again he said with far more nasal twang than usual, “I don’t know what your relationship is with my sister. I can hardly believe she has ever given you permission to call her by her first name—”

I laughed. He went redder than ever.

“—but you have no relationship with me and I’m under no obligation to give you any help whatsoever. Is that clear? I could kick you into the gutter if I chose, and let me tell you that there’s no gutter so filthy as the gutter of New York City. So you’ll take a month’s salary in advance from me and no more, and by God, if you don’t want to be a beggar by the time my sister arrives, you’ll accept what you’re given and be grateful for it.”

I admit I never thought he’d have the guts to speak to me like that, so I was taken aback. But I tried not to show it. I shrugged and said very well, if that was the way he chose to treat a visitor to his country and his sister’s friend, it was for God to pass judgment on him, not I. “So I’ll say thank you and we’ll speak no more about it,” I added. “I’m not a man that bears a grudge.”

That was twisting the truth, but instinct told me to smooth him over before he went so far as to withdraw his offer of work and money.

The next two weeks were very miserable for me. Charles Marriott played his part; he wrote to Lord de Salis, asked to see Sarah and the children and reminded his brother-in-law that he was a rich man with a childless wife. I’ve no doubt this was wrapped up in the fanciest language, but that wouldn’t have stopped MacGowan picking up the message about money. Money had been scarce at Cashelmara since the famine of ’79, Sarah had told me, and MacGowan wasn’t the man to take a drop in profits lying down.

So with Charles Marriott playing his part, I had to play mine and work in his countinghouse, or his office, as he called it, but I hated that and quit after a week. I was used to being my own master and spending each day in the open air, so what would I be wanting with days spent sitting on a high stool and copying out rows of figures? I didn’t know how any man could live like that, and I told Charles Marriott so when I quit.

“And how are you going to earn your living now?” says he, very sarcastic.

“Why, Mr. Marriott,” I said, “don’t you be bothering yourself about that, for sure it’s none of your bloody business.”

“Well, don’t come to me when you’re starving” he said, and I didn’t for I didn’t starve.

I’d met other Irishmen by this time. There were Irish in my lodging-house, and soon I knew the Irish bars and Irish eating places and the Irish factions and I found the job I wanted. There was this man Jim O’Malley—he must have been a kinsman of mine and both of us descended from Queen Grace herself—and he had a chophouse south of Canal Street with gambling in the back room and girls upstairs and he needed someone to keep order from time to time when the place got too lively. I picked up a gun and all there was to know about turning a fast card at poker, and soon I was doing very nicely for myself, with two new suits and better lodgings and a steak for dinner every night on the house. I was doing well, there was no denying that, but Sarah was still at Cashelmara.

Lord de Salis—writing at MacGowan’s dictation, I’ve no doubt—said he couldn’t let four little children take that long cruel voyage to America and his wife couldn’t bear to leave them behind. However, if Charles Marriott himself wanted to cross the Atlantic …

Charles Marriott said he couldn’t possibly leave his business at present, and besides the children weren’t so little and would probably enjoy a sea voyage very much. He hoped to welcome them and Sarah to New York before the end of the fall.

Lord de Salis wrote back with more excuses, and I realized with a great rage that this letter-writing was going to go on for some time. But Charles Marriott was not only patient but crafty, and he didn’t give up easily or else go rushing across the Atlantic waving a big stick.

“It’s just a question of time, Drummond,” he said as I paid my weekly call on him to find out if there was any news. “He’ll run out of excuses—or money—eventually.”

Time ticked on. Jim O’Malley bought an oyster saloon off Broadway, very fashionable, and invested in a fancy brothel, and the O’Flahertys, another Irish faction, started to muscle in on him, so I was kept pretty busy. Those O’Flahertys were always a wild crowd, as anyone who’s ever been to Galway City knows, and they were wilder than ever in New York, where everyone ran in factions and there was a lot of money to be made if you were in the right line of business. The only time we got any cooperation from the O’Flahertys was when the Germans began to crowd us both, but it was a funny world we lived in, at the O’Flahertys’ throats all week and then trooping to Mass with them on Sunday. It made me think of home with the Joyces and the O’Malleys beating one another to pulp in a faction fight and then all mingling peacefully in church together the next morning. I thought of home a great deal, usually when I was in church or when it was raining. It rained in a hard foreign way in New York. There was no soft Irish mist, and instead of walking through wet green fields I would have to trudge through dirty, dark city streets. I hated the city. I always hated it even when I was doing well for myself, and day after day I longed for Sarah and home.

Lord de Salis said how good it was of Charles Marriott to be so interested in his estate, and if he had twenty thousand dollars to spare he might like to consider an investment. Charles Marriott said yes, he might, and he would discuss it with Sarah when she brought the children to New York in the spring.

You’d think I would have missed Sarah less as the days passed, but I missed her more. I even stopped telling the priest about the wicked dreams I had because after a while I became tired of shocking him to pieces in the confessional.

“You’re a married man lusting after a married woman,” ran the familiar words, “so your thoughts are doubly adulterous.”

“But you’ll give me absolution, Father?” I pleaded, for to tell the truth I lived a dangerous life in some ways and my one dread was of dying violently before I could receive absolution for my sins. I always did my best to keep in a state of grace, but after a while the priest became angry with my adulterous thoughts and I stopped going to confession.

That upset me, for I was as religious as any other decent Irishman, and I fully expected retribution, but nothing happened except that Jim O’Malley gave me a raise and offered me the pick of the whores in his new brothel.

“Well, thank you, Jim,” I said. “You’re a generous man and no mistake.” But of course it was the same old story. I couldn’t look at another woman for more than two seconds before thinking how inferior she was to Sarah, and besides, I was terrified of the diseases you can get from city women. The sights I saw in New York and the tales I heard were enough to make anyone’s hair stand on end. I’ve never been a man to rate celibacy more than a passing sneer, but for once in my life I was as celibate as a Benedictine monk.

That didn’t make life in New York any easier for me either.

Lord de Salis wrote and said he really couldn’t consent to his children going to America; it was too far. But if Sarah wanted to go without them he wouldn’t stand in her way.

One Sunday morning in February I awoke and all the heat was off and it was so bloody cold that I’d have sold my soul to be sitting by a peat fire. I stayed in bed and thought of Ireland, and I don’t believe I’ve ever been so miserable in all my life. In fact I was in such a low state that I didn’t go to Mass.

Now, I thought, surely God’ll reach down from Heaven and punish me. First I stop going to confession and then I turn my back on the Holy Sacrament itself. God help me, for surely something terrible’s going to happen.

But nothing did. That week I won two hundred dollars at faro, and Charles Marriott said Sarah had decided to visit New York in April—without the children.

I never went to Mass after that. I wanted to, but I could no longer pretend to care about the adultery, and if I couldn’t lie to myself any more I didn’t see how I could hope to lie to God. All I cared about was Sarah. I didn’t give a tinker’s curse that we were married to other people, because our partnership was going to be greater than any marriage, and she was going to mean far more to me than even the best wife in the world meant to her loving husband.