Cashelmara (75 page)

“Time to explore the bedrooms,” says I, wrapping a purple towel around myself, so off we went, tiptoeing down the corridor with Sarah giggling in terror in case we should bump into a servant.

“Stop!” she gasped. “I’ve got a stitch in my side and I can’t move another step till it’s gone!”

“Well, that’s a problem that’s easily solved,” I said and carried her across the threshold of the nearest bedroom. By some stroke of luck it was the one that belonged to Charles, and I soon found out that the springs of the enormous bed would have gratified an acrobat.

“Your brother goes up a notch in my estimation,” I said, trying a bounce or two.

“But we can’t stay here!”

“Why not? I like it. Jesus, what a bed!”

So we stayed, but Sarah was so nervous that presently I pulled out and suggested we move to her room.

“Perhaps it would be safer,” she agreed in relief, but when I asked if she was going to straighten the covers before we left she was so hot for me she said she’d do it later.

Later never came.

We were just sneaking down the corridor two hours afterward so that I could slip out of the house before Ned came home from his museum when on the landing we came face to face with none other than the master of the house.

“Charles!” exclaimed Sarah guiltily. “How early you’re back today!”

“I’ve been back for some time,” he said, giving her the hardest of hard looks. “I’ve been busy setting my bedroom straight—and the bathroom in the north wing—before the servants could see the mess for themselves and draw their own conclusions.”

Sarah blushed. She wasn’t the sort of woman who blushed easily, but when she did there was no hiding it. “Charles …”

“Be quiet!” he said fiercely and swung around on me. “Get out. And never show your face in this house again.”

“Wait a minute!” I said. No soft-living, high-stepping New York swell was going to tell
me
what to do. “If I’m good enough for your sister—”

“You’re not good enough for her,” he said, never raising his voice but speaking much faster. “You’re a convicted felon and you earn your living by acting as a gunman for a criminal Irish faction downtown. Are you going to get out of this house immediately or shall I have my servants summon the police?”

“Charles,” begged Sarah. “Please …”

“I’m not having him in this house any more, Sarah. It’s my house and I’m entitled to refuse admittance to any man I please.”

“But—”

“And how dare you bring him here and behave like a whore—no, don’t pretend you haven’t treated this place as if it were a bordello! Have you no shame, no sense of decency? Does it mean nothing to you that your name is now so notorious in New York society that everywhere I go I hear people whispering, ‘There goes Charles Marriott. His sister is the one who amuses herself with cheap Irish scum—’”

“Why, you—”

“Maxwell!” screamed Sarah and somehow managed to slip between us before I could throw him downstairs.

“It’s the truth!” shouted Charles Marriott. “All my friends joke about it behind my back. Evadne’s even been slighted because her sister-in-law is little better than a streetwalker!”

“What a tragedy for you both!” cried Sarah. “Very well, I’ll leave tomorrow!”

“Leave? Sarah, are you insane? This man’s only after your money! He won’t want the expense of keeping you!”

“Shit!” I yelled. “I’d keep Sarah even if I had to pawn my soul to the devil to pay the rent! Get out of my way and let me take your sister out of your fucking house!”

He went white at my language and tried to grab Sarah’s arm. “Sarah, you’re not going with that man. I absolutely forbid it. What about Ned? If you think this man’s fit company for a boy that age—”

“Ned’s my son!” cried Sarah. “He’s not yours! And I’ll be the judge of who’s fit company for him!”

“I’ll cut him out of my will. I’ll stop the allowance I’ve been giving you. Not one cent of mine goes into your pocket so long as you’re living with that man!”

The doorbell rang far away.

We looked down the stairs and saw the upturned faces of the gaping servants. After a long moment the butler recovered himself enough to stumble to the door.

It was Ned and his tutor, back from the museum.

“I’ll come tomorrow,” said Sarah to me in a trembling voice. “I must pack my clothes and talk to Ned. But I’ll come tomorrow morning.”

I said nothing, just kissed her and began to walk downstairs. Ned was looking at me, and something in his expression reminded me of someone, though I couldn’t think who it was.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Drummond,” he said. He had always been very polite to me after our dinner at Ryan’s, but my hopes of taking him on expeditions had never come to anything. He had a talent for inventing excuses, and after a while I had stopped issuing my invitations.

“Hullo, Ned,” I said, smiling at him just as I always did, and then I walked out of Charles Marriott’s house for the last time and spat at the gilded gates as I stepped past them into Fifth Avenue.

I BOUGHT SARAH A
wedding ring and had it engraved with our initials and the date. All that evening I wondered if we would ever be married in church, but I didn’t see how that could ever be unless we outlived our spouses, and although I could think with joy in my heart of de Salis in his coffin, I hated to picture Eileen in the grave. It was no use hoping divorce might lead to a proper wedding because God doesn’t recognize divorce, everyone knows that, but if Eileen chanced to die (which God forbid) and if de Salis drank himself to damnation … Sarah might turn to Rome—heretics often did—and then we could be married properly before a priest. I kept thinking what a relief it would be if I could go to Mass again with a clear conscience unburdened by that terrible worry about not being in a state of grace. I’d grown used to living outside the Church, but once in a while I’d wake up in the dark and break out in a sweat at the thought of purgatory.

Well, it was no use worrying about it, I told myself when I awoke that morning after a disturbed night. I’d rather burn forever than give up Sarah, so I’ve no choice but to live for the present and not dwell on the future.

Besides, it was easy to forget about purgatory once Sarah arrived at my apartment.

She brought with her two trunks, two bags and Ned. “I told my maid I would send for her later,” she said, “and I decided I didn’t need the other baggage I brought from Ireland.” She wore a blue walking costume with a lot of navy embroidery up and down the front seams and a big hat with flowers in it, and with her beside me I felt as smart and grand as any lord with a ten-thousand-acre estate.

“This is a great day,” I said. “Make yourself at home while I run out and buy some champagne.”

So I ran all the way to the liquor shop and back, and when I returned I found Sarah polishing some glasses for us while Ned sat quietly on the edge of the sofa.

“Take off your coat and roll up your sleeves!” I said to him, for he looked so uncomfortable in his tight reefer jacket, so he shed it obediently and went on sitting quiet as a mouse in his corner. I’d been afraid he might be sulky, but he was good as gold.

“You must have champagne with us!” I said to him with a smile, and when he said “Thank you, sir” I could hardly remember how rude he had been when we’d first met. I thought: We’re going to get on fine. We’ll be friends in two shakes of a lamb’s tail now.

“I saw my friend Liam Gallagher last night,” I said to Sarah, “and he says he’s sure his brother in Boston could find a job for me. He’s going to write to him and find out, but I hope he’s right, for I’m tired of New York and it would do us all good to start afresh somewhere else. Besides,” I added, thinking of my pardon, “maybe the Clan in Boston will be more willing to help me than the Clan here.”

“It’s years since I was in Boston,” said Sarah, “but I remember it as being a lovely old-fashioned city. I’d like to go there again.” And she started to talk to Ned about Beacon Hill and Paul Revere’s famous ride.

Ned nodded at intervals, and once or twice he said, “Yes, Mama,” as he watched his champagne. When she had finished he asked if he could go for a walk to explore the neighborhood, and in spite of Sarah’s doubtful expression I said why not, for he was old enough to look after himself and my street wasn’t disreputable.

“But don’t wander too far, Ned,” said Sarah anxiously as he left. She tended to protect him too much, and I could see I’d have to put a stop to that. A boy must have room to breathe when he’s growing up, as my father had always said to my mother when she had become overanxious with me, but the truth is that women aren’t meant to have only one child to look after, for it’s too hard for them to have all their eggs in one basket.

When Ned had gone I said to her, “This man Phineas Gallagher in Boston is rich—and influential too from all I hear—so if he takes up my case maybe the Clan will give me a decent hearing, and then by this time next year we’ll be back in Ireland and living as man and wife.” Then I gave her the wedding ring and filled up her glass and we were very happy.

Later she said, “I’ll try very hard not to be an expense to you, Maxwell. I have all the clothes I need, but I’m afraid my laundry bills might be expensive and I don’t know what we can do about meals. Do you suppose I might find someone who would teach me to cook?”

“Certainly not!” I exclaimed. “The idea of it! We’ll eat out while we’re in New York, and as soon as we get to Boston we’ll take a bigger apartment with a kitchen, and you can have a maid who can come in every day to cook and clean for us.”

“But the expense … I don’t want to be a burden.”

“I’ll be making good money in Boston. Everything will go well once we leave this place, I know it. Once we get to Boston our luck will start to turn.”

We left New York a week later, much to our relief. The apartment was too small for the three of us, and although Ned was so quiet we hardly knew he was there, we were both uncomfortably aware of him on the sofa as we lay in bed in the other room.

“I’m sorry to lose you, Max,” said Jim O’Malley when the time came for me to say goodbye to all my friends, but when I tried to give him back his gun he laughed and told me to keep it for a while.

“Take it back to Ireland with you and shoot a Saxon with it,” he said, “and then send it back to me with Saxon blood on the barrel.”

His father had been evicted by Lord Lucan in County Mayo during the famine, and as a boy of six he had watched the English soldiers burn his home to the ground.

“I told my brother Phineas which day you’d be arriving,” said Liam Gallagher. “Are you taking the morning train?”

“Indeed we are,” I said. I was secretly a little afraid of trains. “To be sure it’ll be a terrible journey.”

“Better a train than a coffin ship,” said Liam, and I thought: Jesus, these Irish-Americans have memories like elephants. It’s true that all the Irish like to dwell upon the past, and I’ve sworn vengeance on Cromwell’s men myself often enough after a jug of poteen, but the Irish-Americans are more Irish than the Irish, as I’d noticed more than once since I’d set foot on American soil.

The train journey was just as bad as I’d thought it would be, though of course it wasn’t as bad as an immigrant ship, I admit that. But we’d picked a hot day to travel, and I missed getting us reserved seats in the best parlor car. Since I’d never been on a train before I didn’t know all the ins and outs of reservations and tickets and “checking” the baggage, as they call it. We did travel first-class, but since nearly all the rail travel in America is first-class that wasn’t saying much, and the truth of the situation was that we had to endure a six-hour journey crammed into a long, stuffy, crowded car no better than a giant cigar.

I tried to apologize to Sarah, but she said it didn’t matter a bit; she was just happy to be going away with me. I felt so proud when she said that and thought what a real lady she was, so strong and fine, always loyal and never uttering a word of complaint. Ned didn’t complain either. He sat in his corner with a storybook for boys in his hands, but the car swayed too much to make reading easy, so he spent most of his time looking out of the window.

I tried not to look out of the window too often. Personally I think it’s heathen as well as downright dangerous to go so fast, and if God had intended man to travel faster than the speed of a horse he would have created a nice decent animal to do the job. But a chain of cars running along little rails! It wasn’t natural somehow, and who the devil wants to be averaging forty miles an hour anyway?

However, before we were even halfway to Boston I not only knew the answer to that question but wished we were averaging eighty so that the abominable journey could be over sooner. I believe there was supposed to be some sort of air-cooling system, but it didn’t work, and by the time we arrived my clothes were soaked in sweat and I was sick to the stomach with all the swaying and rocking.

“We’ll find a hotel for the night,” I said to Sarah. “The very nearest hotel to the station.”

Sarah, who was too exhausted to speak, nodded thankfully.

We stumbled down the platform. It was so hot that I wondered if I’d died without knowing it and was already tasting hell-fire. People bumped into us and shouted in loud voices, and Sarah looked so ill I thought she’d faint.

“Ned,” I said, hardly able to speak myself, “take your mother to that bench over there and sit down while I find the baggage.”

“Maxwell …” Sarah clutched my arm and pointed down the platform. “Look!”

I stared, dazed. An enormous black man, immaculately dressed, was standing facing us some yards away. In his hands was a large board on which someone had printed boldly in charcoal
MAXWELL DRUMMOND
.

“Holy Mother of God,” I said, so weak I hardly had the strength to be amazed. “To be sure it must be a message from the Almighty Himself.” I stumbled down the platform, half afraid the glorious vision would disappear, but the messenger remained firmly planted on his chosen spot and watched with interest as I staggered up to him.

“I’m Maxwell Drummond,” I gasped.