Cashelmara (83 page)

“Good heavens!” exclaimed David. “Isn’t it amazing how much easier everything’s suddenly become now that we don’t have to contend with MacGowan?”

“MacGowan would have fought me every inch of the way over the children,” said Sarah. “It was a personal feud.” Her voice wasn’t quite even, and when I looked at her I saw her eyes were brilliant as if she had a fever. Desire stirred in me, just as it always did when I saw the passion of her hatred burning in her, but I smothered it and wandered casually toward the bedroom door.

“If you’ll excuse me I’ll change my clothes,” I said over my shoulder. “I’m dusty as a tinker after all those hours on the road.”

“Drummond.”

It was Thomas. Still moving casually, I turned to face him.

“I’d like a word with you in private, if you please.”

“Of course,” I said. “As many words as you like, sir.”

He followed me into the bedroom and closed the door. “I merely wanted to tell you,” he said, “that the children are staying at Cashelmara while you continue to share this room with their mother. Forgive me for being so direct, but you’re not a fool and you must realize that I do have a certain responsibility toward my nieces and nephews. Perhaps you would be kind enough to take another room—if you don’t intend to return immediately to Clonareen.”

“Of course I’ll take a separate room,” I said, deciding it was best for the moment to roll with the punches. “And you needn’t worry, Mr. de Salis, that Sarah and I won’t be very discreet once we’re back in the valley. We don’t want to do anything that might lessen Sarah’s chances of getting a divorce and custody of the children.”

For the first time I saw him look relieved.

“Was there anything else on your mind?” I asked helpfully, but he shook his head.

“Not at present. Thank you, Drummond,” he said and went meekly back into the sitting room.

It was ten minutes before Sarah could get rid of the brothers and send Ned off on some errand. I had stripped to my underclothes and was lying on the bed to rest my tired muscles. I had closed my eyes, and when I heard her enter the room I kept them closed because I knew I’d tell her everything if I saw her and wanted her.

“Maxwell …”

“All’s well,” I said.

“Tell me.”

“I will. But not just yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because when your little brothers-in-law come rushing back from Cashelmara I want you to be as innocent as Eve before she met the snake.”

“What a bad actress you must think me! How weak and feeble!”

“You know it’s not that, but—”

“Then stop treating me as if I were made of china!”

I opened my eyes and was lost.

“No,” she said when my intentions were beyond my power to conceal. “If I don’t have your confidence why should you have mine?”

So I told her. I told her everything, and afterward I had her like I’d never had her before, and the violence soldered us together like a white-hot iron. When we fell apart at last she slid gasping into an exhausted sleep, but I didn’t even close my eyes. I lay beside her and thought how fate could bend a person into different shapes, and then I kissed her, covered her with the quilt so that she wouldn’t get cold and opened the wardrobe in search of fresh clothes.

When she awoke she was very quiet, and when she tried to put up her hair she started to cry.

I said nothing, just sat down beside her on the wide stool and put an arm around her shoulders.

“I feel so strange,” she said, “as if a part of me were dead.”

“I felt like that too.”

“Sometimes I think he drove me mad. But I’m not mad, am I, Maxwell? At least, I’m not mad any more, and since it’s all over I know I’ll never be mad again. But I can understand now why you didn’t want to tell me.”

“I would have told you later.”

“Yes—when the time was right. I’m sorry. But I promise I won’t fail you. I shall be very strong and do everything exactly as it should be done.”

“I know you will, sweetheart,” I said. “I know it.”

We said no more after that, and when she was dressed we went downstairs for dinner.

The de Salis brothers left the next morning. I did nothing about taking a separate room for myself but told Sarah to say I had done so if Thomas asked her about it. By this time Sarah could think of nothing but seeing her children again. She hardly knew what to do with herself beyond pacing up and down the sitting room in a fever of impatience and gazing from the window as if the de Salis carriage was already on the point of rolling into the square.

“They could be here in three days,” she said, crossing off the days on her fingers. “A day for Thomas’s and David’s journey, a day to pack, a day to travel …”

“Don’t forget de Salis might delay them by kicking up a fuss.”

“But I know Thomas and David will insist—and Patrick will give way because he’ll be too crushed about MacGowan to care. Oh God, how am I to wait! I shall die of impatience, I know I shall.”

But Thomas came back before the end of the second day. He arrived alone, and as soon as Sarah saw him she burst into tears.

“Wouldn’t he let them come?” she cried as we both tried to comfort her.

“They’re coming tomorrow,” said Thomas, kissing her. “There, there, Sarah, I’m so sorry, but they had to pack, you know, and Nanny said it wasn’t possible for them to leave earlier.”

“But why didn’t you wait for them? Why did you come back so soon?”

“Because there are some things that have to be said.”

There was a pause. It was early evening, and we were in the sitting room of out suite. Ned had been reading the newspaper at the table by the window, Sarah had been mending some clothes and I’d been working out my money in a notebook. Glancing around just before Thomas’s arrival, I had thought what a peaceful, domestic little scene it was.

“Things that have to be said?” repeated Sarah, and I saw her fingers tighten on her needle as she picked up her sewing again.

“About the situation at Cashelmara.” Thomas was still standing watching us. “Patrick’s very ill. He drank himself almost to death the night before we arrived, and Madeleine is going to take him to a first-class nursing home near London. So you’ll be quite at liberty, Sarah, to return with all the children to Cashelmara as soon as Patrick’s well enough to leave.”

“And MacGowan?” said Sarah fearfully. “Did he leave as he promised? Doesn’t Patrick want to go with him?”

He looked at her but was evidently satisfied by what he saw. He turned to look at me.

“MacGowan’s dead,” he said.

There was a silence. Although I was watching Thomas I was aware of Ned glancing at me over his shoulder. He had gone to the door to shake hands with his uncle and had been wandering back to his newspaper by the window.

“So it’s dead he is!” I exclaimed with a delight I took no trouble to disguise. “And not a minute too soon, the thieving dishonest rogue! That’s the best piece of news I’ve had in a month of Sundays.”

“He was murdered,” said Thomas.

“Well, of course he was. No villain like Hugh MacGowan ever died a natural death. And who was the hero who plunged the knife into his heart?”

“MacGowan was shot,” said Thomas. “Both he and his father were killed. The murderer hasn’t been found.”

“May he prosper and increase,” I said, sinking comfortably into my armchair again.

For a moment I thought young Thomas wasn’t going to rise to the bait, but in the end he opened his little mouth and nibbled at it.

“Drummond, I can’t help but feel your attitude is unfortunate. I know MacGowan was a despicable character and you had every right to bear him a grudge, but to condone murder—to make a mockery of the law …”

This was exactly the diversion I wanted. “That’s rich,” I said, “coming from an Englishman. English laws never did Irishmen one blind bit of good, Mr. de Salis. Hugh MacGowan was allowed to plunder and pillage my valley for years, and why? Because Englishmen have been plundering and pillaging Ireland for centuries, that’s why—and all in the name of law and order, of justice, righteousness and religion!”

“I have absolutely no intention of getting involved in one of those political arguments which can only end with you referring me to the example of the Wretched Cromwell at Drogheda,” said young Thomas with surprising spirit. “I know Ireland’s suffered in the past, but Ireland should count itself lucky that it’s been riding through the nineteenth century on England’s coattails and not on the coattails of some country like Russia—then you really would have something to complain about! England has poured money into Ireland. The system of social welfare that exists here is far in advance of anywhere else in Europe—”

“We don’t want your goddamned money!” I said. “We want our freedom!”

“You want to sink back into the Dark Ages,” said Thomas, “and on reflection perhaps that’s exactly where you belong.”

“We want to live in a world where we own our own land,” I said. “We want to live in a world where we don’t have to live in terror of a bad harvest, we want to live in a world where men like Hugh MacGowan can’t rob us and beat us and evict us from the only homes we’ve ever known, we want to live in a world where a man can’t be tried before a packed jury and jailed for crimes he didn’t commit. And we want to live in a world where ‘murderer’ isn’t just another word for ‘patriot’ and ‘hero.’”

“Is this leading up to a confession that you yourself killed Hugh MacGowan?” demanded young Thomas, very bold and reckless by this time. “It certainly sounds as if it is!”

“Thomas!” gasped Sarah. She played it just right. She had risen to her feet, but now she sat down abruptly, as if the shock was too much for her.

“Sarah, you’d better leave us,” said Thomas. “Ned, help your mother into the bedroom and stay with her till I send for you.”

But Ned didn’t move.

“Here, sweetheart,” I said to Sarah, stooping over her and giving her hand a small private squeeze. “Let me help you.”

She submitted as if she was stunned. Leaving the door open so that Thomas could see every move we made, I helped her into the bedroom and stooped to kiss her as she collapsed on the bed.

“There’s nothing to worry about, sweetheart, I promise,” I said in my clearest voice, “for I can prove I’m innocent, and if you wait here I’ll go back and tell Mr. de Salis so.”

She nodded, careful not to look at me, and I left her, closed the door and prepared to produce my trump card to flummox young Thomas.

“Mr. de Salis,” I began earnestly, “I swear to you on my dead mother’s grave that during all the conversations I had with my kin this week on the subject of Hugh MacGowan, the word ‘murder’ never once passed my lips.”

“In that case,” said young Thomas, bold as brass, “you’ll have no objection when I ask you where you were on Tuesday afternoon.”

“Indeed I have no objection! I was at Leenane. As soon as I left Cashelmara I went to Leenane to see all my old friends there. They’ll vouch for me. I stayed the night at the inn and took the car the next morning for Galway.”

There was a long silence. At last young Thomas said, “I see. You’ll forgive my suspicions, but you had been at Cashelmara that day, and—”

“Well, it was a natural mistake to make, and you can be sure I’ll bear you no grudge!”

“—and MacGowan had left a letter behind,” said Thomas with a flintiness that rocked me unpleasantly. “I read it.”

MacGowan my enemy, my nemesis … “Did he, now,” I said with a smile. “And was it a confession of all his crimes?”

“It said you had extorted the resignation from him at gunpoint and that you had beaten and tortured him.”

“And if that isn’t just the kind of lie one would expect from such a pervert! Jesus, as if I’d ever stoop to the kind of behavior that was the breath of life to him!”

“Why should MacGowan have written the letter if what he said was untrue?”

“To have his revenge on me, of course! I’d driven him out of the valley, and to be sure he’d rather die than take the defeat lying down. Where did you say this letter was, Mr. de Salis?”

He hesitated fractionally. “I gave it to the District Inspector.”

I knew he hadn’t. He had wanted to question me before the D.I. even heard that I’d been back in the valley. He had his sister-in-law to think of and his nephews and nieces, and he was quite smart enough to imagine all sorts of uses for that letter.

“You’ve got it in your pocket, haven’t you?” I said, still smiling at him. “Well, don’t look so worried—I’m not going to relieve you of it at gunpoint. I don’t have a gun anyway, and besides I don’t care what you do with the letter. Show it to the District Inspector and let him make what he likes of it. I shall deny it’s true, and the District Inspector can take it or leave it as he pleases. What does it matter now? All that matters is that I never fired the bullet that killed Hugh MacGowan, and nobody on this earth could ever prove that I did.”

“Quite,” said Thomas, his eyes expressionless behind his spectacles.

There was a pause while both of us decided what to say next.

“Mr. de Salis,” I said, resolving to drive home my victory by shoring up his confidence in me, “please rest assured that I care for Sarah as if she was my wife and I want to do all I can to look after her and the children. Give me a chance to prove my good intentions and I swear you won’t regret it. Can’t we shake hands and be allies?”

He hesitated, but when I said, “You’ll not hold it against me, I hope, that I’ve the courage to speak up for my country to an Englishman such as yourself?” he did offer me his hand. “Of course not,” he said evenly. “You’re entitled to your opinions. Very well, since we both want the best for Sarah and the children, an alliance would certainly be sensible. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I shall retire to my room to recover from the journey. Ned, perhaps you’d like to come and see me for a few minutes before dinner.”

“Yes, Uncle Thomas,” said Ned from the window.

I had forgotten he had been there, listening to the entire conversation. He was still looking down at the open newspaper on the table, but as the door closed he glanced up at me.

“Well, I’m afraid your uncle thinks I’m very heartless,” I said to him with a smile, “but I’d be a liar if I said I was sorry MacGowan’s dead, wouldn’t I?”