Authors: Susan Howatch
For months Marguerite and I had worried about my ability to stay faithful to Patrick. It was ironic to think that when my marriage finally collapsed the infidelity was Patrick’s, not mine.
It took me a long time before I realized what was happening. I wasn’t totally blind. I saw from the beginning that Hugh was going to take Derry’s place, but it was because I assumed Hugh would be no more than a second Derry that I closed my eyes to the situation long after they should have remained wide open. There was another reason too for my slowness, for in the new year I went to England at last to see the children and sort out Marguerite’s effects, and I was away from Cashelmara for some weeks.
“I’d like to come with you, of course,” Patrick said. “But I really think I have a duty at present to stay here.”
It would indeed have been awkward for him to leave. Hugh had offered to quit his post in Scotland in order to help his aging father at Cashelmara, but first he had had to return to Scotland to wind up his affairs there, and if Patrick too had left at that time the estate would have been quite untended. The elder MacGowan had gone with his son—”A holiday,” explained Patrick, “to improve his health”—and for a month Cashelmara was without an agent.
I went to London. I saw my children. I wrote long dutiful letters to Patrick asking if I should engage a governess or tutor for Ned and saying how well John could walk now and how pretty Eleanor was when she smiled. David had returned to school, but Thomas came up to town every weekend from Oxford to help me sort through Marguerite’s possessions. When I had finished with the house in St. James’s Square I went down to Surrey. It was painful to return to the house at Mickleham where we had spent so many happy months, and yet in confronting the pain I was at last able to grieve in a more normal way for Marguerite and I spent many hours weeping in my room.
As if mirroring my pain, Thomas wanted to sell the house at Mickleham, but David refused to allow this. Evidently the happy memories that were so hard for Thomas and myself to bear were a solace to him, and at last in deference to his feelings the house was not sold but let for a short period to a family who had just returned from India. The townhouse was retained. The boys regarded it as home, and although Patrick had invited them to live with us at Cashelmara they were old enough to prefer a home of their own.
“Besides,” said Thomas, “Ireland’s no place for an Englishman these days what with the Land League and the agrarian outrages and all this talk of Home Rule.”
“Ireland’s such a delightful place to visit,” said David, anxious that I shouldn’t take offense, “and I would certainly like to spend part of each year at Cashelmara, but …”
“Not all the year,” I said. “I understand.”
Patrick too said he understood. He was answering my long dutiful letters as soon as they reached him, and this surprised me, for he was a poor correspondent. Presently he told me that Hugh had returned from Scotland and would often have dinner with him after they had toured the estate together.
“Hugh’s frighteningly efficient,” he wrote, “and hard as nails about money. I can’t believe how lucky I am that he wants to come and work here.”
This pleased me very much. If Hugh was going to make Patrick a rich man again I was going to be the last person to raise any objection.
“Old MacGowan’s better now,” wrote Patrick in March, “but he and Hugh don’t really get on together very well, and so I’ve invited Hugh to stay at Cashelmara until Clonagh Court is rebuilt. I thought Clonagh Court would suit him rather well. Of course it’s been empty since Derry and Clara lived there, and the wretched Irish have chopped down all the doors to use for fuel, but nevertheless it does have distinct possibilities. Hugh says I can’t afford to renovate it immediately, however, so that’s why I invited him to stay at Cashelmara. He can have the guest rooms in the west wing, and I don’t think he’ll really get in our way at all.”
My way, I thought. But I was impressed by Hugh’s grasp of what Patrick could and could not afford, and I agreed that in order to keep a first-class agent at Cashelmara it was vital to provide him with a first-class home.
Meanwhile, I was making my preparations to return to Ireland. A governess had been engaged for Ned; Mr. Rathbone, the family attorney, had been seen for the last time; and Patrick wrote to say that there hadn’t been a new case of fever in the valley for three weeks.
“… and I’ve just had a letter from Edith,” he added, concluding his letter with bad news. “She’s quarreled with Clara and wants to know if she can come to stay. It’s deuced awkward, isn’t it? Now that Marguerite’s dead, it would hardly be appropriate for Edith to live alone with the boys at St. James’s Square, and if she’s quarreled with Clara she has nowhere else to go unless I invite her to Cashelmara. I suppose I’ll have to invite her, but I know it’ll be an awful bore for you, darling, and you’ll probably be furious. But what else can I do?”
I thought of Marguerite saying, “Poor Edith … one must make allowances,” and I did my best to dredge up the dregs of my charity.
“Yes, you’ll have to invite her,” I wrote back to Patrick with reluctance, and soon Edith arrived at St. James’s Square to join me on the journey to Ireland.
I’ll say this for Edith: She could never mention Marguerite’s name without tears springing to her eyes, and when I saw this my heart did soften and I made all kinds of resolutions to be patient and friendly toward her.
But I still found this hard. Edith was cross because she hadn’t had an invitation to spend the Season in Town, and she resented the prospect of being marooned at Cashelmara.
“It’s not marriage itself I care about,” she said to me in her querulous voice, “but a girl ain’t worth sixpence unless she’s married, Sarah, we both know that. And, besides, I’d like a home of my own and the freedom to come and go as I please. Personally I think most men are very silly creatures and I never did care for children, but I’ve got my self-respect, just like any other girl, and I don’t see why I should be a failure and Clara a success just because Clara paints herself up and simpers at the right moment. Heavens, you should see how much Clara rouges! I think it’s disgraceful. I never thought the day would come when I would have to admit to anyone that my own sister would stoop so low.”
I had to tolerate this tedious conversation throughout the entire journey to Ireland, and by the time I arrived at Cashelmara I was wondering not only how I had endured the journey but how I was going to endure the approaching summer. In fact I was so sick of Edith that I was even more pleased than I thought I would be to see Patrick again. He hugged me very warmly and said how much better I was looking, and then he hugged all the children and gave Ned a pick-a-back ride around the hall. Amidst the excited squeals of joy I barely noticed Hugh watching from the gallery, and it was not until some minutes later that Patrick called him down to present him to Edith and the children.
Of course I soon realized that they were living in each other’s pockets, out together all day and dining together every evening, but I decided immediately that I wasn’t going to complain. I was twenty-nine years old now, not a spoiled, petulant bride of nineteen, and I prided myself on being mature enough to cope with my husband’s intense friendships with people of his own sex. So when Patrick said to me guiltily, “I suppose you resent me spending so much time with Hugh,” I said at once, “Not at all, darling. I expect you’ve missed the boys since they went back to England, and it’s nice you’ve found a good friend to keep you company.”
I thought how proud Marguerite would have been of me. No scenes, no tantrums, just a serenity which came from an adroit handling of an awkward situation. Of course it
was
awkward that Patrick had decided his best friend should be his Scottish agent, but it was really no more awkward than when Derry had been his best friend, and that was a situation I knew all about, that was a road I had traveled before, and a problem that is familiar isn’t nearly so difficult to solve as a problem outside one’s experience.
Also, my marriage was at a different stage by this time. In the early years I had wanted Patrick’s company every hour of the day and night, but now that we were leading our separate lives I was no longer inclined to lose my temper merely because he preferred someone else’s company to mine.
Yet Hugh was very different from Derry. I knew this, still, with a misunderstanding that seems in retrospect almost deliberate, I went on assigning him Derry’s role. I had hated Derry, but now unexpectedly I found myself sympathetic to his memory. I remembered his wit and his gaiety, his good looks and his charm. I could understand why Patrick, after a lonely, gloomy childhood, had chosen Derry for a friend, but what I found impossible to understand was why he had chosen Hugh to take Derry’s place. Hugh was always so self-effacingly courteous to me that I never summoned the energy to dislike him, but still I thought him not only humorless and passionless but also unremittingly dull.
“But he’s really quite clever,” said Edith. “Oh, not a gentleman, of course, but he’s remarkably well educated for a mere agent, and those Scots are always so hard-working. I wonder why he’s never married.”
“Well, he’s so plain a woman would have to be desperate to look at him more than once,” I said snappishly. Edith always made me snappish, and after ten minutes in her company I found myself saying things I would normally have shunned.
“But he’s very masculine,” said Edith, “don’t you think?”
I said I really hadn’t thought about it and excused myself from her company by saying I wanted to look over my household accounts. Cashelmara was fully staffed again by this time, but although Hayes and his wife had eventually crept back from Dublin to resume their posts as butler and housekeeper, Hugh, like his father, had insisted that they be dismissed. I was sorry, for Mrs. Hayes had always been agreeable and Hayes himself had long seemed a part of Cashelmara, but it did at least give me the chance to act as my own housekeeper and evolve an efficient system for running the house. At first I found it very difficult. Irish servants are notoriously unwilling to be efficient, and I began to despair of ever living in an organized household, but gradually I learned from my numerous mistakes until at last I had some idea how much food cost, how many tenants paid their rent in food, how much the servants could be expected to do and how many funerals and wakes would keep them from doing a full day’s work. In fact I was so busy, dividing my time between household matters and the children, that it was not until early June that I found out exactly how matters stood between Patrick and Hugh MacGowan.
It all happened very simply. George called late one morning from Letterturk, and when I received him he told me he had come in response to a note from Patrick. He didn’t mention what message the note had contained, but I suspected it had been a request for a small loan. Patrick wouldn’t have dared ask for a large one, but only money could have driven him to invite George to lunch.
I knew nothing about this invitation, but I concealed my ignorance from George and sent Flannigan to find Patrick. Flannigan was the new butler from Dublin. He always seemed to walk on tiptoe and possessed a large paunch and impeccable credentials.
“I hope Patrick hasn’t forgotten he sent for me,” said George, sensing my ignorance and beginning to pace in annoyance up and down the room. “I postponed an important engagement to ride here to see him.”
Flannigan chose that moment to enter the room and say that Patrick was nowhere to be found.
“Let
me
go and look for him,” I said, acutely embarrassed by this time, and escaped upstairs as fast as I could. I looked in our apartments, and when I found them deserted I went to the bathroom. There was only one bathroom at Cashelmara, an innovation I had achieved with great difficulty some years ago when an engineer had been coaxed from London to install a bath and a water closet, and although the plumbing was always breaking down it was at least an improvement on the medieval conditions I had found on my first visit to Cashelmara. Convinced that Patrick was there (Flannigan would have had too much delicacy to invade a bathroom), I rattled the handle noisily and was most surprised when the unlocked door swung open to reveal an empty room. I went to the nurseries. No one was there, for the children were all outside in the garden. I was just beginning to feel baffled when I remembered the sitting room of Hugh’s apartments and hurried down the long passage to the west wing.
“Patrick!” I called, knocking on the sitting-room door, but there was no answer. I looked in. Again the room was empty, the curtains blowing lightly in the breeze from the open window, and I was about to hurry back to the gallery when I heard Patrick laugh.
I spun around. Across the room, twenty feet away from me, was a door that led into the adjoining bedroom.
I should have stopped to think then, but I didn’t. It was so much easier not. to stop, not to think, not to face reality. So much easier to remember George pacing angrily up and down the morning room, so much easier to say to myself in relief, So Patrick’s here after all. So much easier to cross the room, to knock and open the bedroom door without waiting for a reply.
“Patrick …” I began, and then everything ended, all my illusions, all my false hopes, all my desire to preserve the pathetic shell of my marriage.
I looked upon the truth, and the truth was terrible to me.
Not one of us spoke. The scene should have remained a clear tableau etched forever in my mind, but so appalled was I by what I saw that now when I look back all I can recall is the bed bathed in the brilliant sunlight of that summer morning and the smile of amusement tightening the corners of MacGowan’s wide, brutal mouth.
PATRICK SAID, “WE’D BETTER
talk, hadn’t we?” and I was dumb; I could think of nothing to say. I had forgotten entirely about George waiting downstairs. Hours later I heard he had left in disgust when neither Patrick nor I appeared to lunch with him, but meanwhile I could think of nothing but my discovery.