Cashelmara (63 page)

WHEN I RECOVERED CONSCIOUSNESS
my only thought was that one day I would kill him. I had no idea how or where or when I would kill him, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that one day I was going to take my revenge on Hugh MacGowan, and I was going to take such a revenge that he would wish he had never come to Cashelmara, never ridden up that long winding drive into our lives.

The lamp was still burning in the darkness, and I was alone. It was very cold in the room, and in the first aftermath of shock I shivered, but when the rage began to burn inside me I no longer noticed the cold. The rage grew and grew. Soon it was such a huge virulent force that I hardly knew how to keep it in check, and its power frightened me. I thought: I’m going mad. But then I realized the rage was generating its own peculiar strength, and the strength enabled me to say to myself: If I go mad, MacGowan wins. He’ll send me to an asylum and I’ll never see the children again.

The very thought of such a failure infuriated me. I at once made up my mind not to fail, not to go mad. I had to win, and to win I had to survive.

I started to think about survival.

MacGowan must believe me to be thoroughly cowed, so I must play the part of broken victim so convincingly that no trace of my rage showed. With Patrick I could allow a moderate amount of anger to show; that would be natural in the circumstances, but with MacGowan I must appear to be completely crushed. Then he would think I was no longer a threat to him, and once he thought that I could take advantage of his overconfidence and escape.

Escape would be very difficult and very dangerous, especially since I couldn’t possibly leave the children behind. But I would have to escape somehow, have to think of a way. Of course if MacGowan were to die—but the police would arrest me at once for murder, and an arrest, like madness, would mean the loss of the children and the end of everything.

I checked myself. What was I doing even thinking of murder? The shock must have temporarily unhinged me. Only people who were insane or wicked committed murder, and I wasn’t going to go insane—I’d already made up my mind about that—and I certainly wasn’t wicked either.

But I wanted to kill him. I wanted my revenge.

Mustn’t think about that at present. Think of one thing at a time. Think first of survival, and save all thought of revenge until later when I had safely escaped from Cashelmara.

I stayed in my room all that day, and when Patrick sent me a note to say he wanted to talk to me I refused to see him. I wanted very much to see the children, but they were so innocent and I felt so unclean. Finally I took a series of baths. I bathed that evening and the next morning, and then I had a third bath after lunch and a fourth before dinner. After that I stopped for fear my behavior would be thought too eccentric, but I was at last able to face the nurseries, and when I saw my children again I felt not only much stronger but also more determined than ever to play the waiting game I had chosen for myself.

I went downstairs. I saw Patrick face to face. I controlled the shaft of hatred which twisted through me at the sight of him. That all took great strength, of course, but my strength was still growing, nurtured by my rage, and its growth was amazing to me. Soon I felt not only strong mentally but strong physically as well, strong enough to cope with all the domestic problems that continually arose among the servants and more than strong enough to nurse John night and day through a lung infection. In fact the only irregularity in my health lay in the absence of my monthly indisposition, but that, of course, was merely the result of the shock I had suffered.

MacGowan kept his distance from Cashelmara. Patrick avoided me whenever possible, and I went through the motions of leading my normal daily life. I even thought I might resume my calls, and when Patrick forbade it I was so startled to be thwarted in the role I was playing that I at last allowed him to have a few minutes of private conversation with me. Stammering in his awkwardness, he reminded me of the troubled world we lived in, and as he spoke I remembered Parnell’s arrest the previous October and the Land League’s suppression by proclamation a week afterward.

“But that was long ago,” I said. “Months ago. All the trouble must have stopped now.”

“On the contrary the discontent’s only been driven underground and it seems to be simmering more fiercely than ever. There were windows broken at Clonagh Court last week, and Hugh never goes out alone on the estate now. Sarah, about Hugh …”

“I refuse to discuss him.” I was startled by the violence in my voice, and in alarm I made a great effort to steady myself. I mustn’t let him sense the full extent of my rage.

“Sarah, I’m sorry. I never thought … never dreamt … he would lay a finger on you himself.”

I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I said nothing. He looked at me pleadingly, and to shut out his face I closed my eyes—and suddenly, like a nightmare, I saw the match flare in the darkness, MacGowan’s eyes above the steady flame.

“All I wanted was to show you what kind of man I am.”

“You succeeded,” I said.

“No, you don’t understand. Please listen to me for a moment, Sarah.”

Opening my eyes, I glanced at my hands. MacGowan’s sickening image faded; I no longer felt dizzy.

“You see, all my life—until I met Hugh—I was trying to be what other people wanted me to be. I tried to be the son my father wanted, the brother Marguerite would have admired, the husband you were looking for—and yet I wasn’t any of those people, and the harder I tried to be what I wasn’t the worse mess I made of my life. But when I met Hugh—can’t you understand, Sarah? I knew who I was at last. I grew up. I wasn’t a statesman or a politician—or even a society rake—and I certainly wasn’t the husband you wanted. But that didn’t matter because I’d grown up enough not only to recognize who I was but to accept it. I was just an ordinary sort of fellow who liked gardening—and if I’d only been an artisan or even a modest country squire this wouldn’t have mattered a scrap. But my great bad luck was that not only was I born into the wrong class but I was born into the wrong century and country as well. If I’d been born two or three thousand years ago in Greece my relationship with Hugh would have been perfectly respectable and no one would have thought twice about it.”

“I see,” I said. “You’re not vicious, depraved and degenerate after all. You’re simply unlucky. What a comfort for us all!”

“Sarah, I know you’re entitled to be angry and I know you won’t believe me, but what happened the other night wasn’t what I intended to happen. I wanted only to show you that I was finished with trying to be what other people—including you—wanted me to be. I wanted you only to be an onlooker, but I was drunker than I should have been, and when I started to get excited—”

“You thought what fun it would be to rape me while Hugh raped you. Oh no, I forgot. Hugh doesn’t have to rape you, does he? You submit with the greatest enthusiasm. Well, I’m quite unable to follow your example, Patrick, extraordinary though this may seem to you, and now I’m afraid you really must excuse me. I must talk to Flannigan about the new bill from the wine merchant in Galway.”

“Sarah, it won’t happen again, I swear it. Please—let’s try and forget the disaster ever happened. Let’s go back to where we were before.”

It amazed me that he should think this was possible. I looked down at the floor again so that the expression in my eyes wouldn’t give me away.

“For the children’s sake, Sarah.”

I was fighting for control over my rage. It was a hard fight, but I won. I didn’t shout at him, “Don’t dare mention the children in the same breath as your perversions!” but said instead without any particular expression, “Very well, Patrick, but all the same I’d prefer not to see Hugh again—at least not for a while. I’m sure you understand.”

“Oh God, he’s coming to dinner tomorrow night! Look, please be sensible about this. You’ve got to face him sooner or later, so …”

So MacGowan had at last decided to see how submissive I was in his presence. For one exquisite moment I fondled my dreams of revenge, but then I pulled myself together and gave Patrick the answer he wanted to hear.

“Very well,” I said stonily. “I’ll receive him—but only to keep up appearances for the children’s sake. And in future I’d prefer it if you dined at Clonagh Court instead of bringing him here.”

He said he would, but I knew the promise was meaningless. He was clearly thinking in relief that I was consenting to a return of the polite relationship that had existed in public between the three of us, and that consent would have negated any request that MacGowan should stay away from Cashelmara. No doubt he thought the request was merely a matter of form, a sop to my injured pride.

I turned my back on him before the rage could show in my eyes and went to talk to Flannigan about the wine merchant.

Spring was coming. After I had seen Flannigan I went upstairs and, to keep calm in spite of my rage, examined my wardrobe to decide which of last year’s clothes could be altered to conform to the current fashions.

I began to try on my summer dresses.

How strange! None of them fitted me. Of course I was over thirty now and couldn’t expect to keep my figure forever, but how could I possibly have put on so much weight? I knew I had been eating well, but I had been very busy, and surely one only became fat if one was inactive. Perhaps—horrible thought!—I was going to grow as stout as my mother had been.

I thought about my mother the following night when MacGowan came to dinner. All day I had been revolted by the thought of seeing him and repulsed by the submissive role I knew I had to play, but when we were finally face to face the familiar strength came to my rescue again, and I found I could control my feelings so long as I didn’t look him in the eyes. If I once allowed myself to do that I would see the match flare again in the darkness, so I spent most of the time watching the carpet and took care to speak only when I was spoken to.

But MacGowan spoke only to Patrick. He spent dinner talking about the techniques of forestry, and as I pretended to listen to him I thought of Mama saying there were times when a girl needed her mother. And then I thought of long white dresses and promises of eternal devotion and what a dishonest charade a wedding was, futile, unreal and even a little fantastic. I tried to remember my wedding gown but could not.

So odd about those summer dresses.

“My dearest Sarah!” exclaimed Madeleine on her first visit to Cashelmara for some weeks. “Is it too soon to congratulate you?”

And I thought: If I don’t believe it, it won’t happen.

But I knew, even as I told Madeleine she was mistaken, that I had no choice but to believe.

At first I was very calm. I thought of knitting needles and falling downstairs and drinking a glass of gin—all those horrifying old wives’ tales about which I had heard during the course of my married life. I wouldn’t have the baby. I couldn’t have it and stay sane—and my fear of madness overwhelmed me again so that for a long time I could do nothing but shudder uncontrollably. When at last I managed to stop shuddering I gave way to self-pity and wept. I had to give up all thought of escape for the next few months. To escape with the children was difficult enough, but with the added complication of pregnancy—no, I would have to wait. I started to weep again. There was no God after all. Supposing I died as the result of trying to get rid of the baby. The thought of trying to get rid of it both frightened and repulsed me. More tears. I cried and cried endlessly in my room.

And then at last when there were no more tears to shed I suddenly thought: Poor, poor little baby.

I remembered too who had wanted the child. Not Patrick. Not MacGowan.

Me.

Why should I be so stunned to realize I was pregnant? Didn’t I always get what I wanted? I had wanted a baby. I had been so consumed by my own selfishness that I had scoffed at Patrick when he had suggested it would be wrong to bring a child into the world we shared at Cashelmara, but Patrick had been right, I knew that now, and the responsibility for the entire disaster could rest on no other shoulders but mine.

I cried a little more, but for the baby this time, and after a very long while, dry-eyed, I was able to think: I shall love it better than any of the others in order to make amends for what I’ve done. I tried to imagine the baby and hoped it would be a girl, dark, as I was, and not like Patrick at all. I wouldn’t think of Patrick when I looked at her, and whatever happened I would never, never look at her and think of the match flaring in the darkness, MacGowan’s eyes watching me above the single steady flame.

No, I wouldn’t think of that because I would love her so much that it would no longer matter how she was conceived. My love for her would protect us both against that past obscenity; in fact perhaps God had sent her to me with the intention of dulling the terrible memory of that night. Of course! That was it. The baby was not a disaster at all but a foretaste of the victory I would one day win over MacGowan, for what could be more of a triumph than my indifference to MacGowan’s memory and my joy not only in accepting the baby but in loving it with all my heart?

I closed my eyes. I felt very tired, but I was at peace with myself, and I knew then without any doubt that I was going to survive.

I never told Patrick I was pregnant. I altered all my dresses, telling the seamstress to make them unfashionably full, but he never guessed why I was hiding my figure and anyway we seldom saw each other. Occasionally we would meet in the nursery, and once in July he joined me in the drawing room when Madeleine came to tea.

“And are you hoping for a son or a daughter this time, Patrick?” inquired Madeleine kindly as she accepted a second slice of boiled cake.

I couldn’t blame Madeleine. I had long since told her she had been correct in suspecting my pregnancy, and naturally she would have assumed that Patrick was looking forward to the baby’s arrival.

Patrick said nothing. He simply looked at me, stood up and walked out of the room.