Cashelmara (29 page)

“But would it be proper for me to write since we haven’t been introduced?”

“I’ll write to Francis and say I’ve given you permission to address her.”

“But what would I say?”

“Well, for a start,” I said, “you could say how delighted you were to see her new photograph and how much more delighted you would be to see her in person.”

He looked at me in admiration. “You’re so deuced clever, Marguerite!” he said, smiling at me despite all his troubles. “You’re the most ingenious girl I ever met!”

Meddling would have been a better word to describe my machinations, but of course I much preferred to think of myself as ingenious. Blushing with pleasure, I smiled back at him.

Some people never learn.

WE DID NOT LEAVE
Cashelmara.

Edward’s arthritis eased, but his stomach ailment troubled him to such an extent that he was obliged to abandon his plans to return to London. The doctor from Westport, diagnosing an ulcer, prescribed a regimen of mild food, but Edward did not care to be told what to eat and sent instead for his doctor in London. To his annoyance he was still prescribed a mild diet, but this time he was allowed a little brandy after dinner and a glass of wine with his meals. I strongly suspected that Dr. Ives told Edward only what he wanted to hear, but I said nothing. I wanted Edward to be well; I wanted to leave Cashelmara. We had been there for nearly two months, quite long enough for me to enjoy that eerie beauty, and now I was longing for civilization, for the brilliant clamor of London or the picture-book coziness of Woodhammer Hall.

But we stayed at Cashelmara. The grass grew lushly by the wayside of the road to Clonareen, and the gorse and heather bloomed yet again on the hillside above the larchwoods. There was a spell of fine weather. The mountains shimmered in a gray-blue haze around the dazzling azure of the lough, and below the house the Fooey River dawdled more idly than ever through the bog to the golden strand of the western shore.

Patrick longed to leave Cashelmara even more than I did. He used to talk yearningly of Woodhammer, but although he did once suggest that he might go ahead of us to England, I told him in no uncertain terms that I should take it very ill if he did. Now was his chance to make amends to his father, I told him heatedly. Now that Edward was bedridden it would mean so much to him if Patrick, not MacGowan, reported directly to him on estate matters.

Patrick looked contrite. He promised to do his best, and when he so meekly acquiesced to my bullying I was aware of my feelings for him undergoing a subtle change. I saw clearly then that I could only truly love a man whose will was stronger than my own. I did love Patrick, but now at last I succeeded in loving him as a brother, for I knew him much too well to love him in any other way. It was Edward I respected, Edward I loved. All through that summer I knew I loved him better than I had ever loved him, and at last when autumn too was gone and the leaves had vanished from the trees I knew I loved him even better than that.

We had not left Cashelmara.

He had been confined to his bedroom for a long time, but although in the beginning he had complained he did not complain any more. On his better days he would dictate letters to his secretary; afterward we would play chess endlessly and keep careful account of the games won and lost. On the bad days I would read aloud to him or simply sit sewing while he lay on his pillows. The drugs made him drowsy, and often he would be able to doze to escape the pain.

I brought the children to see him every day. If he felt well he would talk to them very kindly, taking an interest in even the smallest of their activities, but if he was troubled by pain I simply let them stay long enough to say good night. We often talked of their progress. Thomas was taking lessons from a governess and could already read fluently, while David, not to be outdone, was learning his alphabet.

Shortly before Christmas Edward said, “I wish I could see them grow up. I mind missing that very much.”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s a pity.” I was making a velvet jacket for David—it was odd how I took up sewing in the sickroom—and I was trying to thread the needle when I spoke. The jacket was already a most peculiar shape, but David was so chubby.

We had not spoken of the future before, and I wondered whether Edward might change the subject, but after a while he said, “I want you to be as I remember you best—very bright and joyous—always living life to the full. I disapprove strongly of the dreary drawn-out traditions of mourning to which widows are now expected to conform, and I’ve never had any patience with people who claim to be wedded to a memory. If those people had really enjoyed the state of matrimony so much they would seek to return to it with another partner, so I would regard it as a great compliment to me if you chose to remarry.”

“How unconventional,” I said, thinking fleetingly of Madeleine, “but what good sense!” After a moment I was able to smile at him. I had given up trying to thread the needle and was sitting motionless, the little velvet jacket in my lap. I knew then that I would never finish the jacket, because the sight of it would always remind me of Edward talking of a future in which he himself had no part to play.

“Well,” I said, putting the jacket aside, “if I ever find another man who can match you—which I doubt—and if that man wants to marry a plain, skinny, bossy, meddlesome foreigner—which I doubt even more—I shall seriously entertain the idea of remarriage, I promise you.”

He smiled. We were quiet for a time, but later just before he fell asleep he said, “It takes courage not to pretend. I’m grateful.”

I wanted to reply that I was only following his example, but somehow the words refused to be spoken, and we never mentioned the future again.

Christmas came. We celebrated it quietly, but in the new year Katherine and Duneden came to stay and George began to call more frequently from Letterturk.

Edward had one hemorrhage, then another. His London doctor returned to remain constantly in attendance, and toward the end of January I wrote to Madeleine to suggest that she too come to stay.

I became very busy. The guests had to be looked after; the housekeeper needed to be instructed with great thoroughness to ensure that hot food and hot water were always available at the appropriate times. This feat would have been difficult enough to accomplish at Woodhammer, but it was twice as difficult at Cashelmara, where half the servants were often absent at a wake and nobody ever remembered to wind the clocks to ensure punctuality. I found that household matters took up an increasing amount of my time as more guests arrived in the house, and although I knew it was important that the children should not be overlooked I did not spend as much time with them as I would have liked.

I wanted to spend every available second with Edward.

He was very thin, his flesh shrunk to the bone of his huge frame. He could not eat. He slept fitfully, and drugs gave him only the most fleeting relief from pain.

I remember everyone being distressed. I remember everyone being reluctant to go to the sickroom, and I could not understand that because I wanted to be there continuously. But I no longer took the children to see him. He was too ill, and I had no wish to make an ordeal of their daily visit.

I remember the chessmen covered with dust and the newspaper lying unread on the bedside table. I remember the view from the window and the patterns of light and shade in the room and Edward’s hair a dull white on the furrowed pillow.

I remember at the end praying for more time and yet praying too for Edward’s sake that no more time would be left.

I remember hissing to Patrick, the nails digging into the palms of my hands, “Don’t you dare cry! Don’t you dare stand sniveling at his bedside like a schoolboy!”

I remember everyone asking me questions, should they visit the sickroom, was he well enough, what should they do. I remember finding answers, being very brisk and practical and competent. The house was hushed and still, the voices muffled as if it were all a dream.

I remember saying calmly to Thomas and David, “Papa’s very ill and he wants to say goodbye to you before he dies. It’s sad, I know, for you to have to say goodbye, but he’s in such pain here that he’ll be far better off in heaven, so you must try not to grieve too much.”

David said, “When will he come back from heaven?” and Thomas, who was older and wiser, began to cry.

I allowed the boys to see him only briefly because I did not want to upset them too much, but he did so want to see them one last time.

At the end all he said to me was “Be happy.” And to Patrick he said, “Take care of Marguerite and your little brothers.”

And then the end came at last, and the crimson dusk blazed darkly on the shining waters of the lough.

For a long time I could not sleep at all. I kept thinking of the past and all our finest hours, and at some isolated moment before dawn on one of those sleepless nights I knew, just as one often knows a fact for no logical reason, that I would never remarry. I thought about it often before the funeral, and the more I thought of it the more convinced I became that I was really most ill-suited for marriage. I was too strong-willed for most men, and I did have that very aggravating meddlesome streak. I wondered vaguely if I would eventually summon the nerve to take a lover. I did not fancy the idea of perpetual celibacy any more than I fancied the idea of marrying a lesser man than Edward, and I thought Edward might have approved of a discreet affair or two. He was always very pragmatic about such matters.

I was quite calm. I organized the entire funeral. There was a great amount to do, but I had plenty of time because I had given up trying to sleep. I simply had no desire to do so, and oddly enough I found I did not miss it at all.

I had known many people would come to the funeral even though the February weather was so uninviting and Cashelmara so remote, but I had visualized as mourners only those people among Edward’s enormous circle of friends and political acquaintances. I had never dreamed of his tenants gathering to pay their respects, for wasn’t he a Protestant landlord, one of the most hated class in Ireland, and hadn’t he felt guilty for years because he had turned his back on his Irish estate during the famine?

“Ah, but he waived his rents, my lady,” said Sean Denis Joyce, and one of the older O’Malleys said, “There was never an eviction during all the years of the Hunger,” and someone else said, “And when it was over he came back and he gave us new seeds for our potatoes and our oats and still he waived his rents till our crops were grown and we could pay again.”

“He was a great man, my lady,” said Maxwell Drummond with a gentleness I would never have expected of him, “and we are all, every one of us, in his debt.”

They came by the hundreds up the road from Clonareen. They gathered in the drive peacefully with not a man drunk among them, and when the coffin left the house they followed it all the way uphill to the very door of the chapel through which we, the Protestants, walked alone. But afterward at the graveside, just before I fainted, I was aware of the crowd around us stretching back into the larchwoods, and the intense yearning quality of the silence, so restrained and so un-Irish, was broken only by the soft clicking of rosary beads.

I was so surprised when I felt faint. I had had no idea I might be on the verge of illness, and although I knew that the lack of sleep must have been bad for me I had assumed I would eventually sleep when I could no longer do without it. It did not occur to me that I was clinging to consciousness in order to savor every last second of my life with Edward, but when I saw the coffin lowered into the grave I suddenly thought: I’m alone. My life with him is finished.

Then I fainted.

When I recovered my first words were “I want Francis.” That surprised me too, because I had long learned to stand alone without needing anyone except Edward, but of course my desire for Francis was natural enough now that Edward was no longer there.

“Edward’s dead,” I said. His family was clustered around me anxiously, and I could see him in every one of them; he was behind all their eyes. “But none of you knew him,” I said. “That was sad. I was the only one who knew him, wasn’t I?”

Someone found some smelling salts. There was much fussing and whispering, but all noise faded until it was a mere murmur like the distant drone of the sea and I was beneath a vast unending sky. For one brief moment he was with me. I could see his hair, dark and only lightly tinged with silver, just as it had been when we had first met, and I could see his blue eyes and I knew that he was smiling although I could not quite see his smile. I said very clearly, just so that there should be no mistake, “I couldn’t possibly ever love anyone else.” And then the sky went black and the sea roared over my head and I knew that when I woke again I would be able to cry.

I cried for a long time. I had to stay in bed because I cried so much. Dr. Ives was kind but insistent. I had to lie in bed with the shades drawn and sip chicken broth at dinner and eat a boiled egg every day for breakfast. Most of all I had to have absolute quiet so that I could sleep. I had a vague impression of everyone walking on tiptoe and never daring to speak above a whisper.

Nanny brought the children to see me when I asked for them. Poor little boys! They had just lost their father and looked as if they thought they might lose their mother too. I hugged them so hard that they squealed, and I regret to say I wept over them too, but they were very good about that and David said my tears tasted delicious, almost as nice as lemonade.

Edward’s other children were very kind. Madeleine even forsook her hospital to nurse me, and although Duneden was obliged to return to London Katherine stayed on at Cashelmara. But it was Patrick who cheered me most. He worked diligently with MacGowan on estate matters, as if he knew that was the best way to please me, and looked after Thomas and David as devotedly as if they were his sons. I no longer had to worry about them being neglected once I knew that Patrick was caring for them so well.