Cashelmara (8 page)

“You,” said Annabel slowly at last, “are marrying Cousin Marguerite Marriott?”

There was nothing to do but go through the motions of redeeming a situation that was already beyond redemption, so although I was furious with my blunder I managed to say in an equable voice, “Yes, she’s the most delightful girl, and I hope you’ll find it easy to be friends with her.”

“Can my memory conceivably be serving me incorrectly or is she really only a child of seventeen?”

“She will be eighteen when we marry, and someone who is eighteen is no longer a child. Annabel, I realize that this news must necessarily come as a shock to you, but—”

“A shock!” She stood up abruptly and began to tug on her gloves. “Yes, it’s a shock. Your hypocrisy always shocks me. And to think how virtuously you accused
me
of ill-bred vulgarity when I married Alfred!”

“You should be careful not to say things you’ll regret later. When you meet Marguerite—”

“I’ve no wish to meet her. It’s disgusting.” She was already heading for the door, and her movements were oddly uneven. “Absolutely disgusting. You’ll be the laughingstock of London. Everyone will say you’re in your dotage. Really, Papa, how dare you think of making such an exhibition of yourself with a young girl! I declare I’ve never been quite so revolted in all my life!”

My fury, which had until then been directed against myself, now streamed toward her in a thick ungovernable tide. I caught her by the shoulders. I did not speak. I merely spun her round and shook her until I realized she was crying, and then I stopped, for her tears shocked me far more than any of her abuse. I had not seen her cry since her childhood long ago. She was the very last woman to indulge in noisy floods of weeping, and even now as I watched she dashed the tears from her eyes and reached for the door handle.

“Annabel …” I was already bitterly regretting my loss of temper, but I was too late.

“I refuse to receive Cousin Marguerite as your wife,” she was saying abruptly. “You will, of course, wish Alfred and me to leave Clonagh Court and live elsewhere.”

My spirits had sunk to such a low ebb that I barely had the strength to reply. “Why should your husband be penalized for your foolishness?” I said wearily. “No, stay at Clonagh Court and perhaps one day you’ll overcome your stupidity. Meanwhile, pray don’t return to Cashelmara unless you wish to apologize for the intolerable rudeness you’ve displayed to me this morning.”

She did not answer. She walked quickly away, her shoes tapping a sharp rhythm on the marble floor of the hall, and presently I returned to my desk to resume my letter to Marguerite. But I could no longer write. I merely sat at the desk and looked around the room, but there was no solace for me there, only the clock ticking somnolently on the chimney piece and, close at hand by the inkwell, my son Louis smiling at me joyously from his small, exquisite gold frame.

AFTER THE DISASTROUS SCENE
with Annabel I asked myself over and over again why I had been so misguided as to confide in her. To have confided in my mistress had been justifiable, since she deserved to know the arrangements I was making for her future, but where Annabel was concerned I had no such excuse for not holding my tongue until the engagement was formally announced. Perhaps I had been unwittingly trying to place Annabel in the role of confidante which had always suited Nell so well, or perhaps the truth was simply that Annabel had annoyed me so much that I had become quite unreasonable in my attempts to annoy her in return. A third possibility—that I was beginning to resemble an infatuated young man who talked of his beloved at every conceivable opportunity—was of course so absurd that I refused to entertain it at all.

However, one fact at least was clear. Having confided in Annabel, I was now obliged to confide in Patrick before he heard the news from her. I spent a careful ten minutes planning what I should say, and then with great reluctance I summoned him to the library.

“There is a matter I wish to discuss with you,” I began and immediately noticed his expression of alarm. Did I so seldom have anything pleasant to say to him? I was perturbed enough to abandon my set speech and put him at his ease as quickly as possible. “It has nothing to do with your past conduct,” I said at once. “It concerns my visit to America and your mother’s cousins, the Marriotts. In particular it concerns your cousin Marguerite, the younger of Francis Marriott’s two sisters.”

He gazed at me in silence and waited trustingly for me to continue.

“I was very taken with Marguerite when I met her,” I said, “and I’ve invited her to visit England next spring.”

There was another silence. His expression was blanker than ever. Taking a deep breath, I plowed on. “I’ve resolved that she should join our family, Patrick. Before I left I broached the subject with her, and she agreed to permit the existence of a private understanding that we would be married next summer in London.”

He continued staring at me as if he were waiting for me to say something else. I was just wondering in great exasperation if he had listened to a single word of my monologue when he said in a rush, “Oh, that’s very nice, Papa. Is it proper for me to congratulate you?”

“I can’t think why the devil it shouldn’t be.”

“Oh. Yes. Well … congratulations, Papa. Papa …”

“Yes?”

“Papa, will she …” He stopped again and blushed.

“Will she what?”

“Will she have children?”

“My dear Patrick!”

“I shouldn’t mind if she did,” he said, the words tumbling from his mouth. “I like babies. But, Papa, there’s no need for you to do this, you know. I’m sure it must be very boring for you at your time of life to have to marry anyone, so if you feel obliged to remarry because you want another son, please don’t put yourself to such great inconvenience, because I’m going to turn over a new leaf, I swear it. I’m going to work so hard at my lessons that you’ll never be disappointed in me again.”

“Patrick,” I said. “Patrick.”

He stopped. His face was flushed with earnestness, his eyes brimming with tears.

“My dear child,” I said, disturbed, “you’re entirely mistaken about my motives.”

“I know you’ve always held it against me that I ruined Mama’s health. Nell told me how you wouldn’t even choose a name for me and that I was called after you only because no one knew what else to call me.”

“If Nell told you that I hope she also told you that I thought your mother was dying and I was completely distraught. Do you suppose I would have behaved in such a way if I’d been in my right mind? And as for your accusation that I blame you for your mother’s ill health, nothing could be further from the truth.”

“But then why are you always so strict with me? If you really bore me no grudge you wouldn’t beat me so often!”

“My dear Patrick,” I said, relieved that we had at last reached the core of his misunderstanding, “you must realize that when a parent takes the time and trouble to correct a child he does so out of love for the child, not out of resentment or lack of interest. The very fact that I have never allowed your errors of behavior to go uncorrected should be proof to you that I cared very much for your welfare and Was most concerned to give you the best possible upbringing. I’m only sorry you should have been so uncertain of my very deep affection for you. You’re my heir. Nothing can alter that, nor would I wish it altered, though as we both know your conduct has certainly left something to be desired in recent months. However, that has nothing to do with my decision to remarry, and even if Marguerite does have sons you can be certain that my affection for you will remain unchanged. Now, please—no more such foolish talk, because it does no credit to either of us.”

I had spoken as kindly as I could, but to my distress he began to cry. Hoarse sobs choked him, and he buried his face in his hands in a clumsy effort to smother his tears.

“Patrick, please,” I said, upset, not wishing to be unkind but knowing I should be firm. “Control yourself. The situation doesn’t call for such grief, and, besides, tears are unmanly in a boy of your age.”

He sobbed louder than ever. I was just wondering in exasperation what the devil I was going to do with him when there was a knock on the door.

“Yes?” I shouted in distraction.

“My lord,” said Hayes, “it’s Ian MacGowan who’s here to see your lordship, if you please.”

MacGowan was the agent at Cashelmara.

“Tell him to wait.” I turned back to Patrick as soon as the door closed, and to my relief I saw that he had found a handkerchief and was mopping up his tears.

“I meant what I said about turning over a new leaf, Papa,” he assured me earnestly. “I shall be a new person altogether, I promise.”

I said I was delighted to hear it. At last, after I had dismissed him as gently as possible, I heaved a sigh of relief, sent word to the stables to saddle my horse and went upstairs to change my clothes. Half an hour later I was riding with MacGowan down the road to Clonareen.

I could not remember when I had last had such an exhausting morning.

MacGowan was a Scot whom I had engaged after the famine to help reconstruct my ravaged estate. In dealing with the Irish one has to recognize their limitations. It is no use choosing one of their number to collect rents and run an estate with thrift and efficiency. MacGowan, a gloomy Presbyterian, not only had the knack of dispelling the mists of Irish whimsy which clung to the subject of rent payment but was intelligent enough to indulge in the occasional glum act of Christian charity, and this meant that although he was disliked he was by no means loathed by the tenants. He lived in a comfortable stone house two miles away, but I suspected the comfort was marred by his wife, who was one of those brawny Scots women with a perpetually threatening expression. Their one son, a boy of thirteen, was a solitary child; his Scots blood and his father’s occupation made him an outcast among his Irish contemporaries, but occasionally he would venture to Cashelmara in the hope of fraternizing with Patrick and Derry.

“How is your son, MacGowan?” I inquired tactfully as we inspected the estate that morning.

“Very well, my lord, I thank you. I’ve a mind to send him to Scotland soon to be educated.”

“Oh?” I said. “A boarding school?” I did not want MacGowan leaving my employ and seeking a position on some Scottish estate for the sake of his son’s education.

“A grammar school in Glasgow, my lord. My wife has relatives there, and Hugh could stay with them while he studied.”

“I see,” I said, relieved that I was to be spared the thankless task of seeking another agent “An excellent idea, MacGowan.”

My lands seemed no worse and no better than usual, poor by English standards but prosperous in comparison to conditions elsewhere in Ireland. After the famine I had managed to merge many farms into larger holdings that could be run profitably on English lines, but there were still countless small potato patches that I had left untouched. I was not like my neighbor Lord Lucan, who had evicted tenants right and left after the famine in the desire to improve his lands. Indiscriminate and unmerited eviction was then and is now too often the equivalent of murder, and although Lucan might have been able to overlook this, I would have despised myself if I had followed his example.

At Clonareen I had a word with the priest, spoke to the patriarchs of the two leading families in the valley, the O’Malleys and the Joyces, and inspected the fields of wheat and oats, which all looked promising. However, the small forestry scheme I had initiated high up on the mountainside above the village showed signs of failure, and I was disappointed to see how many of the young trees had died in my absence.

“It’s the soil, my lord,” said MacGowan gloomily. “You’ll not find anything flourishing on land that’s no better than solid rock.”

This was MacGowan’s way of saying, “I told you so.” He patiently suffered all my attempts to farm my estate imaginatively, but I knew his heart sank to his boots each time I announced a new experiment to him. His only attempts at either warning or criticism consisted of his saying in a sepulchral voice, “I’ll beg to remind you, my lord, that we are not in England,” or, as in my disastrous attempt to cultivate the yam, “There are some things that grow in America, my lord, which God did not intend to thrive on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.”

“I’m certain I can succeed with a forestry plantation in this valley,” I said stubbornly to him as we surveyed the withered saplings. “This is simply the wrong site, that’s all. I shall try again somewhere else.”

“If your lordship were to remove the O’Malleys from their potato patches on the upper slopes of Leynabricka—”

“Certainly not. They’d starve to death, and I’m tired of seeing my estate littered with corpses.”

“You could assist them to America,” said MacGowan mulishly. He always had trouble extracting rent from the poorest of the O’Malleys.

“To die like flies in a Boston cellar?”

“God helps those who helps themselves,” muttered the Scot who found it hard not to believe that every Irish immigrant had a thousand opportunities to become rich the instant he set foot on American soil. “My lord, I would be failing you as your agent if I didn’t point out that if the land can produce potatoes it’s likely that it can produce trees, and since nothing else can be cultivated there due to the excessive steep gradient of the mountain—”

“Quite,” I said. “But unfortunately the O’Malleys cannot eat trees, so we must cast around for another site. I’m determined to pursue this, MacGowan.”

But as we rode down the hillside again to Clonareen I had to admit to myself that the future prospects for the forestry scheme were not encouraging.

In Clonareen, where MacGowan and I parted, I wondered whether I might ride to Letterturk, where my brother David’s son was still living in the house David had built on Lough Mask, but in the end I rejected the idea and rode back to Cashelmara. I had seen quite enough of my family that day, and although George was a good-natured fellow, I had always found him irritatingly sycophantic. He would be my heir if anything happened to Patrick, and I could well imagine him seething with indignation when he heard of my plans to remarry.