Cashelmara (86 page)

“I’m not a baby!” yelled John, suddenly deciding to lose his temper. “I’m not, I’m not! I’m grown up and big and I’m going to fight you!” And he swung his fist furiously at my head.

“Now, now!” called Nanny warningly from across the beach.

I caught John’s wrist and held it fast. “Wait, Johnny. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”

“Big beast!” said John, his eyes bright with tears. “Why don’t you go back to America?” And tearing himself free, he stalked off across the sand to the water’s edge.

Miss Cameron and my sisters were only a few yards away.

“Dear me!” said Miss Cameron, who was a tall, angular woman of about thirty-five with a slight but meticulous Scots accent. “What was all that about, pray?”

“It was nothing,” I said. “Just a slight misunderstanding.” I took Eleanor’s hand. “Come for a walk with me,” I suggested, smiling at her. “Maybe we can buy some ices.”

“I want to come too,” said Jane at once.

“You’re not invited. Come on, Eleanor.”

“Let’s see if Nanny has any more of those delicious peppermints, Jane,” said Miss Cameron.

“Shan’t,” said Jane, grabbing my free hand and digging her sharp little fingernails into my palm. “I want an ice.”

“You won’t get one from me. I don’t like spoiled little girls who don’t know how to say please and thank you.”

Jane decided to throw a tantrum. Everyone else on the beach stared as Nanny came skimming toward us, and Miss Cameron clicked her tongue disapprovingly against her long white teeth.

“Run, Eleanor!” I said quickly, so we dashed across the shingle and scrambled up the steps to the esplanade.

“Nothing’s going right for me this morning!” I said wryly. “First I make John lose his temper and then I send Jane into a tantrum. I hope I shan’t quarrel with you as well or I shall feel very out of sorts.”

She smiled but shyly, and her silence was painful to me. I could remember her when she had been little, constantly talking and laughing, always so bright and smart and cute.

“What’s happened, Eleanor?” I said after a pause. “What’s the matter? You’re not shy of me, are you?”

She shook her head, still smiling, and clasped my hand tightly as we wandered down the promenade. We didn’t find any ices, but I bought some potted shrimps from a shrimp vendor and presently we sat down on a bench to enjoy them.

At last I said, “Was it very bad at home after I left?”

She shook her head.

“Was anyone unkind to you?”

She shook her head again.

“You can tell me if they were. Did Mr. MacGowan hurt you?”

She shook her head a third time.

“Who, then?”

“Papa.”

It was my turn to be speechless. I began to feel sick. “What did he do?”

“You mustn’t tell anyone,” she said. “Mr. MacGowan said not to tell anyone, not even Nanny. Mr. MacGowan said that if I told anyone I’d have to be sent away to a boarding school.”

I felt sicker than ever. I could no longer look at my potted shrimps. “Mr. MacGowan’s dead, Eleanor,” I said. “It doesn’t matter any more now. Nobody’s going to send you away.”

“Is he really dead?”

“Of course!”

“I won’t be haunted by his ghost if I disobey him?”

“Never.”

“I’ve been dreaming that his ghost comes back to haunt me,” she said. “I’ve had horrid dreams ever since—”

“Since when?”

“Since Papa went mad,” she said, crying. “It was last autumn. He was helping me stick some new pressed wild flowers into my album, and he was telling me all the names in Latin and in English so that I could label them correctly. There was this lovely tall yellow flower, and when he looked at it he screamed and dropped it and said it was a snake. Then he screamed again and started tearing at his clothes. He said he was being eaten by insects. Cousin Edith came in and Mr. MacGowan, and Cousin Edith dragged me out of the room and afterward Mr. MacGowan said I mustn’t tell anyone.”

“He did that,” I said, “because if Mama had known about it she would have taken you away from Papa, and Papa at that time was trying to convince her that he could deprive her of her children unless she returned to him.”

“But I can stay with Mama now, can’t I? I don’t have to see Papa any more?”

“Of course not. Papa’s a drunkard and not fit to be in the same house as you.” I still felt sick enough to vomit, and every muscle in my body was rigid with anger.

“John says Papa will come back,” Eleanor was saying fearfully.

“That’s not true. He won’t come back. Mama’s getting a divorce.”

“A divorce?” I had thought I was giving her good news, but she was appalled. “Oh goodness, isn’t that terribly wicked? Nanny says divorces never suit.”

“It’s the best Mama can do,” I said rapidly. “It’ll mean that you can stay with her and nobody can force you to see Papa.”

She relaxed in relief. “I do love Papa, but I was so frightened of him in case he went mad again.”

“I understand.” I hugged her reassuringly.

“Mr. Drummond’s not a drunkard too, is he?”

“No, he’ll look after us well, you’ll see. Everything will be fine once we’re all home together again, and you won’t have to worry about anything any more.”

I know I comforted her when I said that, because she dried her eyes and started to eat her shrimps, and presently she even said how nice it was to have a little holiday by the sea.

I didn’t tell my mother what Eleanor had said because I didn’t want to upset her, and although I almost told Drummond that evening I didn’t. I was too ashamed of my father to want to repeat the story, and besides, despite my favorable words about Drummond to John and Eleanor, I was still confused about him. When I went to bed that night I lay awake for a long time worrying in case Nanny should give in her notice once she realized my mother was living in adultery, and before I finally drifted into sleep I remember thinking numbly: If only John hadn’t mentioned MacGowan and his little trees.

But then I slept, and when I awoke all thought of MacGowan and my father had been scrubbed from my mind. For at last it was time to go home to Cashelmara, and it seemed my long nightmare of uncertainty and anxiety was finally coming to an end.

I came home. But it was not as I thought it would be. The house was the same, and so were the horses in the stables, and although some of the servants were new they were all valley people and their faces were familiar to me. Even Flannigan the butler was soon to return, lured back by my mother. The view was as dazzling as I remembered, the lough set in the mountains like a precious stone in a heavy ring, and above the house in the woods the little chapel still stood bleakly above the family graves. Even the cobwebs decorating the musty pews still seemed spun in exactly the same way.

Yet everything was not the same. It was changed because my father was no longer there.

I walked in his garden and it was as if he walked beside me. I wandered across the “lake” lawn, past the blazing borders and up the stone steps to the Italian garden, serene amidst the larchwoods. All the lilies were blooming on the water, and beyond the little teahouse the view of the lough and mountains was framed in white marble. My fingers trailed across the sundial he had carved, and suddenly he was with me again, wearing his shabby work clothes, his long strong hands covered with dirt and his eyes very blue in his tanned face. I could remember wanting to carve yet having no talent for it, but he hadn’t minded my failure. “You’ll be good at all the things I was never good at,” he had said, smiling at me, and when I had said, “But I want to be like you,” he had said that wasn’t important because the most important thing of all was that I should be myself. “If you try to be someone other than yourself you’ll never be happy,” he had said. “You’ve got to be honest with yourself so that you can be honest with other people.”

I hadn’t known what he had meant, and later when I had heard how he had abused my mother and indulged in disgusting practices his words had made even less sense to me.

I went back to the house, thinking I could escape him, but he was there too. I went to the nursery, and there was my beloved rocking horse he had made me long ago. I went to the library, and there were his dog-eared gardening books stacked on the window seat. Retreating to my bedroom, I began to sort through my old possessions—and there was the storybook about King Arthur that he had given me, and stuck inside were the sketches he had made of my pony. I opened a cupboard to shove the sketches out of sight, and out fell my photograph album, the pages flying in the sudden draft of air until it was lying open at the pictures of Eleanor’s christening. I stooped to look. My mother had given me the photographs because I had wanted a picture of my aunt Marguerite, who had died when I was six, and there she was. I could see her standing beside my mother. My mother was holding Eleanor in her arms, and my father was standing next to her, his hand in mine. I wore a sailor suit. We were all smiling at the camera.

1879. Eight years ago. What had happened and why had everything gone so wrong? Was it all Mr. MacGowan’s fault? Or had my father always been wicked and I had simply been too young to notice? Why was my father so wicked? And why, why, why couldn’t I stop thinking about him when he revolted me so much?

My questions went on and on and on, but there were no imaginable answers, and finally I thought to myself in desperation: I’ve got to talk to someone about it. I must, or I’ll go mad.

I went to Nanny. Nanny always had an answer for everything. Some of my earliest memories of nursery life consisted of me asking Nanny endless questions and Nanny providing sensible answers. (“Nanny, why is the sky blue?” “God made it that way, dear, because it’s so restful on the eyes.”)

“Nanny,” I said, “I feel very angry with my father and I want to stop thinking about him but I can’t. Is it wrong to feel so angry with him?”

“‘Honor thy father and thy mother,’” said Nanny.

“You mean it is wrong of me to feel angry with him.”

“There’s no need to feel angry, dear. Don’t think about him at present.”

“But I can’t help it! Nanny, was he always so wicked?”

“Now, Ned dear, we won’t talk about that. It’s not fitting.”

“But I want to talk about it! Why is he so wicked? I don’t understand.”

“Just don’t worry your head about it, dear. It’s not right for you to worry about such things, and I’m sure your mama would be the first to agree.”

“I suppose you now think Mama’s very wicked too.”

“‘Judge if ye be not judged,’” said Nanny.

“But, Nanny—”

“It’s not for you and me to discuss such things,” said Nanny firmly. “My station in life is to look after you children, and your station in life is to be a good brother and a good son. So long as you try to do your duty everything else will take care of itself.”

“But, Nanny, it’s not taking care of itself! And how can I be a good son to my father in the circumstances? Every time I think of him I get upset. I can’t sleep properly at night any more because I worry about it so much.”

“Poor dear,” said Nanny, kissing me. “You mustn’t worry. I’ll make you some nice hot milk tonight to help you sleep. Do you remember how you used to love your hot milk? You even liked the skin on the top! I never knew another child who liked the skin.” I started to say something else, but she said quickly, “You’d better talk to your uncles when they come back from England. They’re both good decent young men. You talk to them.”

At least she was prepared to be charitable to my mother. I knew I should have been glad that I no longer had to worry about Nanny giving notice, but I was too busy worrying instead about what I was going to say to my uncles.

They came back a week later. My father had been installed in a London nursing home, and my uncles had spent long sessions with the family lawyer, Mr. Rathbone, to decide how the estate should be administered while my father was unfit. With my father’s consent a trust had been set up with my uncles and my mother as trustees. My father had objected at first to my mother’s appointment, but for practical reasons he had been advised to consent. My mother, living at Cashelmara, would be in a position to supervise whoever administered the estate, and Mr. Rathbone thought she should be put in a position where she could be held legally as well as morally responsible for the estate’s affairs. My uncles had promised to visit Cashelmara regularly to look into estate matters, but it suited neither of them to live in Ireland. My uncle Thomas was a doctor who specialized in pathology, and my uncle David, who was a gentleman of leisure, had just fallen in love with a young lady who lived in London.

Both my uncles were prepared to appoint Drummond agent on a six months’ trial.

“I suppose that was why you wanted to see us in private, Ned,” said Uncle Thomas. “You wanted to have a further discussion about your mother’s relationship with Drummond.”

“No,” I said. “I wanted to discuss my father’s relationship with MacGowan.”

There was a sharp, awkward silence. Neither of them moved.

“I’ve been thinking such a lot about my father,” I said in a rush, “and there are so many things I’d like to know. For instance, was my father always as wicked as that? Was he as wicked with his friend Mr. Stranahan as he was with Mr. MacGowan? And if he was, why did he marry Mama in the first place? And why are people wicked like that? Why does it happen? And why did Mama marry him if—”

“My dear Ned,” stammered Uncle David, “there’s absolutely no need for you to know about such things at present. You’re far too young.”

“But I’m going to be fourteen soon,” I said desperately, “and there are some things I’ve got to understand. I worry about them all the time—you don’t realize.” I stopped. It was too hard to go on, but presently Uncle Thomas said, not unkindly, “Your father’s a troubled man. He’s very ill. One can only hope that once he’s restored to health he’ll be able to make the moral effort to conquer his vices and lead a normal life. Meanwhile, David’s right and there’s absolutely no need for you to concern yourself with such things, just as there’s no need for you to worry. No need at all.”

“Yes, but …” I thought of my sleepless nights. “I worry about other things,” I said. “I know there’s no need, but I do.”