The Woman from Kerry (4 page)

There was a pause and Rose remembered the day she’d asked why her brother and sister had died.

‘There was a fever that came when people got very hungry,’ her mother had said. ‘Even those who still had enough to eat could catch the fever. Many children caught it. Mary and Michael had it too, but they recovered. Rose and Samuel died in the same week.’

‘And did I catch it too?’

‘No, my love, you didn’t. You were not born till the worst was well over and I fed you myself for a long time. Your father was poorly for a while, but he threw it off. He has always been strong.’

‘And you Ma. What about you?’

‘Me? I prayed I’d be spared to care for the rest of you. And I was.’

The room was silent and growing cold as the last embers of the turf fire shivered and fell to ash. Daniel was looking at her mother now, his face pale
below the dark stubble of his unshaved face.

‘And what words did your father and his brother leave with you Hannah, when they spoke of their ordeal?’

‘They said they had found strength when they least expected it, they had found comfort in the most desolate of places and they had found the richest of hospitality in the poorest of places.’

‘Did they now?’

Daniel repeated Hannah’s words softly to the silent room.

‘And did either of them give you any advice when you gave up your comfortable home to marry your chosen man and come to this hard place?’

‘Yes. My father spoke to me before Patrick and I were married. He knew he would most likely not see me again. He was heart sorry that I was marrying across water and to a man of a different religion to his own, but he respected Patrick and knew he was a good man. What he said to me was this:

“Hannah, you have joy now in this marriage of yours. Long may it last. But none of us passes through life without hardship and great sorrow. Shed tears for your grief, but do not hold bitterness against any person or any situation. Bitterness stuns the spirit and weakens the heart. Accept what you cannot change and ask God and your fellow men for comfort. In that way you will live well however short your span. Give in to the bitterness and you
will never fully live though you go beyond three score years and ten”.’

The last orange sparks on the hearth glowed and faded as the wind blew down the chimney. The single candle that someone had lit and placed on the dresser flickered and steadied.

‘There, friends and neighbours. There are words to put in your hearts when the men come tomorrow. Remember what Hannah has shared with us, both the ordeal of her father and uncle and the experience they gained from it. May God in his mercy watch over us.’

As soon as she’d climbed well above the coach road, Rose paused between the low, wind-bent fuchsia bushes and undid the top buttons of her blouse. The fine cambric, stitched into narrow pleats over her breasts and gathered with ribbon at the neck, dropped back and exposed her pale skin flushed with heat and gleaming with perspiration from the effort of the familiar, short, steep climb.

She turned and gazed back down the rocky hillside now patched with rich summer grass and dotted with early flowers. With a few deft movements she pulled out the long hairpins from the neat coil at the back of her head.

She felt the light touch of the sea breeze as it flowed in over the broad lake below. ‘Oh, that’s better, a hundred times better,’ she said aloud.

She shook back her dark mass of hair and tucked away the few tendrils that were blowing across her eyes. All around her, the red tassels on the fuchsia bushes moved gently to and fro, tall stems of mayflower
swayed easily above the smaller, brighter plants growing in their shadow. The breeze was a delight, cool, but with no edge of chill. She stood drawing in a deep breath of the clean, salt air like someone drinking spring water after a long, dusty journey.

After a few minutes, she began to struggle with the tiny seed pearls at her wrists. However much she loved the pretty buttons, they always made her cross when she was hot, or tired, or just wanted to pull off her clothes and fall into bed. She laughed at herself as she pressed patiently with damp fingers till they slid through the close-fitting buttonholes her mother had stitched with such patience.

None of the other servants at Currane Lodge wore such an elegant blouse. Even were they so fortunate as to possess one, they would most certainly not have been allowed to wear it. But then, none of them was lady’s maid to the eldest daughter of the house. Given Lady Anne Molyneux’s temperament, none of the other house servants envied her the privileges that came her way. She rolled up her sleeves and felt the soothing touch of the cool air on her warm body, threw back her head and stretched out her arms above her head as if to embrace the whole sunlit hillside and the blue dome of the sky above.

Suddenly, the air around her was filled with sound. Surprised and delighted by the shower of notes pouring down upon her she scanned the sky above. Dazzled by the light, all she could make out
were two minute brown specks that shimmered and dissolved and then reappeared yet further away. She shaded her eyes. Immediately, the two specks became one as the lark rose higher in the clear air, its song bathing the quiet hillside where the only other sound was the murmuring of insects drunk with the first honey of the season.

She glanced around her, picked out a ridge of rock protruding from the midst of a flower strewn meadow and sat down, her long, dark skirt flapping slightly in the breeze, her well-polished boots placed firmly on the smooth turf, close-nibbled by the sheep that had moved on, up to higher pastures on the mountain slopes behind.

She sighed with contentment as she listened to the lark’s song. She’d so very nearly had to stay behind with Lady Anne. Immediately, she put the thought out of mind. She was here now. That was all that mattered.

There’d been a few fine days recently and she’d already heard the lark, but today was the loveliest day so far this year. There was something about its perfection that made her want to drink it all in, every precious fragment. She needed the light and warmth to put against the damp and dark of winter, the breadth of the mountain and the sky against the confinement of the servants’ hall and the rooms overlooking the stable yard where she lived with her mother and younger brother.

The road below clung to the edges of the lake where Thomas, the coachman, took young Sam fishing. Beyond the low wall bordering the coach road, its waters lapped gently on the stony shore. Her eye followed the line of the road westwards till it met the coast and the greater expanse of bay that merged with the Atlantic itself, a blue shimmering mass stretching to the far horizon.

‘Nothing out there till ye reach Amerikay,’ old Thomas always said, when they reached Ballybrack and he turned inland along the much narrower road that lay directly below her.

Time and time again, whether on a short outing for Lady Caroline, or on one of the many longer tours for the frequent visitors at Currane Lodge, she’d heard Thomas make the same remark. Something in his tone told her the simple words meant far more than they appeared to do. Certainly, never once did he fail to look out towards the far horizon as they came down from the pass and the whole of Ballinskelligs Bay lay before them.

Whenever he’d been away in Dublin with the family, she felt he was always relieved to be back. He never seemed easy far from the sea. She wondered if he needed the sea to be there, like herself, an infinite space in which there was no master or mistress, no call for the coach to go here or there. No relatives or friends of the family from Dublin, or Sligo, or the north, to be driven around the sights. No cousins from
England to be returned to Dublin or Rosslare for the boat. No gentlemen admirers from nearby estates to be conveyed on picnics with the young ladies.

Thomas never complained. In fact, Thomas said often enough that the Molyneux’s treated their people far better than many he’d heard of who were richer and more important. They’d a lot to be thankful for besides a roof over their heads and decent food. He never tired of pointing to the plight of poor farmers, trying to feed a family on a few acres of land with the rent to pay even when the harvest failed.

Rose sighed. It might be true. Yes, of course, it
was
true. The master and mistress were kind people and not hard to please, but that didn’t mean you didn’t get tired of endless fetching and carrying, listening with one ear for the bell when you were trying to get a dress smoothed or shoes cleaned. You never knew when your work would be finished and you’d have a few hours to yourself. As for her own special problem, Lady Anne’s changes of mood, that was an added burden. You never knew how or when she’d disrupt the ordinary business of the day.

Tears, tantrums or stubborn silences were regular occurrences, almost always unpredictable and feared by family and servants alike. Any small thing, something her four younger sisters would scarcely notice, could cause a total collapse. A speck of dirt on a muslin gown, a decision about what to
wear, whether or not to have her hair up or down. But Rose had never feared her outbursts. From the very first day her mother brought her to the servant’s hall, to begin her training as a housemaid, she’d sized up each member of the family and she’d grasped immediately that Lady Anne, a mere three years younger than herself, was a very strange girl indeed.

Short and squarish like her father, Sir Capel, when all her sisters were slim, fragile, and likely to be as beautiful as their mother had once been, she had fared well enough in childhood. Indulged as a lively and venturesome child, she’d would lead her sisters and cousins on wild expeditions round the estate and into the surrounding countryside, always emerging triumphant, despite the hazards that brought tears and torn clothes to her companions.

Childhood ended abruptly a few months before Lady Anne’s eleventh birthday, when a new governess arrived. Miss Pringle felt it her duty to prepare Lady Anne for the sitting room and the ballroom. She set about it with vigour and unfailing determination. Before many months had passed, Lady Caroline was in despair of her eldest daughter. The once amusing and lively Lady Anne screamed and threw things, tore off her clothes and tramped on them, insulted the household staff, pulled her sister’s hair and ran weeping from the schoolroom.

A gentle woman, whose health had been undermined by continuous unsuccessful attempts
to produce a son who would survive for more than a few months, the mistress of Currane Lodge had neither the imagination, nor the energy, to make sense of the dramatic change. But Lady Caroline was quick enough to observe what was clear to all her servants. Only Rose, a very junior housemaid, could do anything with her.

‘I nearly missed you today,’ said Rose, lying back on the grass, focusing on the ever-diminishing lark, as it ascended higher and higher into the cloudless sky.

‘Rose, where have you been? I’ve been ringing for an age. Didn’t you hear? What am I to do? What am I to do? Today of all days. I’m not due for another week.’

Lady Anne was crouched on the stool in front of her dressing-table wearing only her shift. A pair of stained knickers lay at her feet.

‘Have you a headache, then?’ she asked quietly as she lowered an armful of freshly starched petticoats onto the bed.

‘No.’

‘Does your back ache?’

‘No.’

‘Then what’s to stop you riding if you feel well?’ she asked easily.

‘Don’t you know?’ Lady Anne demanded crossly, her face red and blotchy from crying. ‘Of course, you wouldn’t know. Servants don’t know anything about horses,’ she said unpleasantly. ‘A stallion can
always tell when it’s that time of the month. Conor’ll play me up, I just know he will, and I’ll look such a fool in front of him. Everyone says he’s such a good horseman. All the O’Sheas are.’

‘Then why don’t you ride one of the mares?’

‘I never thought of that,’ she said abruptly. ‘No, I can’t,’ she burst out, her voice rising ominously. ‘It’s impossible. Out of the question. He’ll think I can only handle a lady’s horse. It has to be Conor.’

‘But what does it matter what Captain O’Shea thinks? Do you really like him?’

‘No, I don’t, but that’s not the point.’

Rose saw a twist to the mouth, a droop of the shoulders, that always meant trouble. Say the wrong thing now and she’d start screaming and throwing things, or retreat into a tearful silence that could go on all afternoon.

‘Well I think he’s got bandy legs,’ said Rose firmly. ‘He can’t possibly ride as well as you with legs like those.’ She paused deliberately. ‘Never mind anything else a man might want to do.’

Lady Anne put her hands over her mouth and giggled.

‘Oh Rose, you do say the most outrageous things. Whatever would mother think if she heard you?’

Rose opened her eyes wide and looked at her with an air of innocence.

‘I think Her Ladyship is in the walled garden at the moment.’

Lady Anne laughed aloud, stood up and kicked the knickers into the air, catching them deftly as they descended.

‘Men are stupid. I don’t care if I never marry. Let Lily and Mary go off and have crowds of babies. You and I can have fun without them. Can’t we, Rose?’

‘Of course we can,’ said Rose reassuringly. ‘If I were you, I’d ride whoever you fancy and forget about Captain Bandy Legs.’

‘I’ll ride Conor,’ she replied, grinning broadly as she held up her arms to be undressed. ‘I can wash by myself, Rose. You go down and find Tom, or your brother. Tell them to bring Conor round for me as soon as he’s saddled up. Hurry on now. I want to be at the front steps before the men arrive. I’ll show them how to ride.’

Rose stretched out more comfortably and propped herself up on one elbow, so she could look down the hillside.

‘Poor old Conor,’ she said aloud. ‘She probably made him walk up and down the steps while she was waiting, just to show him who’s boss.’

She sighed. The problem was you never knew what was going to happen. One day you’d spend a couple of hours persuading her to get into a dress for a ball she didn’t want to attend, the next you’d have to do her hair, brush her riding jacket, lace her boots and tie her scarf in no time at all, while she twisted and twitched with impatience all the while.

Well, she’d managed it today. She was out. Away. Free for a few hours. Somewhere further up the valley, the party from Currane Lodge would be following a track across the estate which led up into the adjoining hills. Lily and Mary would be there, sitting neatly on their mares, their admirers in attendance. Sam would be following behind with Old Thomas’s son Tom, the tea baskets, the rugs and the young ladies sketching materials.

She smiled to herself. Dear Sam was in love. Just turned sixteen, a handsome red-head, intelligent above his station, he’d discovered there was more to life than work in the stable or studying so that Sir Capel could send him to Dublin to train as his estate manager. She knew he’d be watching Lily’s every move, thinking longingly of a warm glance from her lovely brown eyes, but Lily had never yet noticed Sam’s existence, not even as a well-liked servant. With Captain Pakenham and his friend Captain O’Shea in attendance, as well as the eldest son of the Blennerhassetts, and the handsome young Lord Harrington it was hardly surprising she’d have other thoughts in her mind today.

An ideal day for a picnic, indeed, but she was glad it was her afternoon off and Sam, rather than herself, had been chosen for the job. Not that there was any problem with Lady Anne when she’d a horse for company. Once on Conor’s back, she became a different person. Easy, relaxed and confident, she
would be agreeable, even highly amusing, so much so visitors who stayed but a short time at Currane Lodge thought the rumours they’d heard about her were flights of fancy, stories that had gained in the telling as they passed from the drawing rooms of one county to those of another.

Once Lady Anne left the schoolroom, Rose had begun to see these drawing rooms for herself. If Lady Anne called for a scarf or a cloak, to go walking in the gardens, she’d slip into the large, ornate rooms and see little groups of elegantly dressed women settled by the huge fireplace, or standing in the deep embayments of the tall windows. Their heads would be inclined towards each other, their voices subdued, as they shared the latest gossip. It wasn’t hard to imagine how rapidly and freely rumours would spread when women had little to do except entertain each other, drink tea, and dress for dinner.

The Currane Lodge drawing room was small compared with what she’d seen when the Molyneux ladies went visiting and only a fraction of the size of Martham Park in Cheshire, where she’d had her first experience of an English country house.