Hungry Hill (40 page)

“You know that I come from across the water,” Henry said. “Well, it is no disgrace to belong to the land of Burke, of Palmerston, of Wellington, but I may say I am the third generation of my family to be adopted by your countrymen. My grandfather and my father lived here, and I lived here as a child, where my brother lives today. The bones of my grandfather lie in this country. Perhaps one day I may do the same.”

And then it was all over, and there was clapping and hissing and singing and shouting, and the Chairman holding his hand for silence and proposing a vote of thanks, and the whole party breaking up and making for the door, with no eggshells thrown and no wild applause either.

The family all drove to the Queen’s Arms for dinner, and Henry was congratulated and smitten on the back by dozens of people he did not know and dozens more he did, and everyone told him he had the seat for certain.

“So very reminiscent of my brother Harry, your uncle,” said Eliza. “I can recollect him making points in just the same way. And your father lounging in a chair, with a puppy on his knee, taking not the slightest notice. I was so glad you insisted that there must always be a ruling class. Really, the people I come across sometimes in Saunby are quite dreadful.

No one would have called upon them in the old days.”

“You ought to live in Nice,” said Fanny-Rosa. “Nothing under a Count there, they’re as common as ditch-water. I liked your speech, Henry, though I don’t know why you want to close public-houses on Sunday; it will only make men drink harder on Saturday night. As for your remarks about the R. cdds across the water, you might have added the old saying that “St. Patrick was a gentleman, and born of dacent people.” Are we going to get anything to eat in this hotel?”

“You must excuse my mother,” laughed Henry to Tom Callaghan. “Living in France has made her a gourmet, and she expects omelettes and salads every quarter of an hour. Waiter, will you please serve dinner as soon as possible?”

“I’ve never in my life been surrounded by so many parsons,” said Fanny-Rosa, “except the time that the Bishop of Slane came to Castle Andriff to spend the night, and brought with him a chaplain and a couple of curates. My sister Tilly and I were brats of children at the time, and we stole into their rooms when they were all at dinner and threw their night-shirts out of the window, and their reverences slept as nature made them… . Don’t look so shocked, Bill. You are a married man and must have slept without your night-shirt before now.”

“You know, Mrs. Brodrick,” said Tom Callaghan, “Henry is much more like you than anybody realises. I’ve been told so often that he is the spit of his uncle Henry, and a chip off his grandfather’s block, but I know now who gave him his quick tongue.”

“Oh, we Flowers always had the gift of the gab,” said Fanny-Rosa; “it enables us to slide through many difficulties.

No, Herbert there is most like me of all my children, and he was so afraid at what he might become that he sought sanctuary behind a dog-collar. As for Henry, people are right to compare him with his grandfather and his uncle. He has the shrewdness of the one, coupled with the charm of the other. Which will gain the upper hand remains to be seen. ‘

The brothers winked at one another. Their mother was in rollicking form. Katherine was wrong for once in her judgment, thought Henry, as Fanny-Rosa raised her glass and pledged his future as a Cabinet Minister. She was probably happier than she had ever been in her life, and Johnnie was entirely forgotten. What a stunning picture she made too, with that crown of white hair, and the green eyes, and the emeralds, as long as you did not look under the table and see the dragging hem. What age was she now?

Fifty-three or comfour; he was not certain. The party was a great success anyway, and even Aunt Eliza became quite flushed and excited, and forgot to be disapproving. Fanny lost her inevitable anxious look, the parsons behaved like schoolboys on a spree, and Tom Callaghan’s great booming laugh echoed through the room. If only Katherine had been there, thought Henry, the cup of happiness would have been complete… .

Polling took place the next day, and the result was to be known by six o’clock, and given out from the steps of the Town Hall. Henry passed the day in a fever of impatience. Now that the speech-making was over, and the canvassing, and the driving about through the streets of Bronsea in a carriage bedecked with blue ribbon, there was a great sense of anti-climax. It was hard to wait about all day for the result. Somehow he felt unable to take luncheon with the rest of the family, and he went out and fed alone in a pub at the end of the town, where he hoped no one would recognise him. He then walked the streets of Bronsea, observing that nearly everyone he met appeared to be sporting in his buttonhole a red ribbon, the Liberal favour, and he counted only a dozen blue rosettes during the afternoon. Possibly his supporters had voted early, he told himself, or anyway they were not the type to walk the streets.

How ridiculous was the whole affair, and what a fool he felt to be so nervous! He found himself outside the shipping-office of Owen Williams, the firm which handled all the copper business for him in Bronsea, and had done so since his grandfather’s time. He stepped in to have a word with the younger Williams, a man somewhat older than himself, about the prospects for the coming summer. Here at last was someone with a blue rosette. It was quite a relief to his mind, and Williams assured him that when he had gone to vote soon after ten o’clock the street had been blocked with carriages, the owners of whom had all worn the right colour.

“It will be splendid to have someone like you to represent the borough,” he said. “I promise myself a treat, and that’s to come up to Parliament and hear you make your maiden speech.”

“But I’m not there yet,” warned Henry.

“All over bar the shouting,” said the other.

For a little while they discussed the mines at Doonhaven, shipping, and the copper trade in general, and just as Henry was about to take his leave Mr. Williams said casually, by way of conversation, that Henry was the second member of his family to pay him a visit that day.

“Why,” said Henry in surprise, “how is that?”

“Oh, your mother dropped in during the course of the morning,” said Mr. Williams, “looking wonderfully well, I thought. She wanted an extension of the loan, you know, and I said it would be quite all right, of course.”

“Loan?” repeated Henry.

“Yes, we advanced her five hundred pounds last quarter, at your request, if you remember, sending the cheque out to her in France, and she wished for a further sum of the same amount. We deduct it, naturally, from your account with us at the end of the year.

That was the arrangement made with her, according to your instructions, she said.”

Henry was bewildered. He had given no such instructions, and knew nothing whatever of a loan to his mother. She must have done this behind his back, without any authority… . The younger Williams was looking at him curiously. Henry pulled himself together with an effort.

“Oh, yes,” he said, “I do remember now.

My mother and I came to some such arrangement. Well, I must be getting along. Glad to have seen you.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Brodrick, and good luck.”

Henry walked back to the hotel, his mind in a turmoil. Good God, his mother to go like that and lie to the fellow Williams, instead of coming straight to him and asking for a gift. He could not understand it. Why, in heaven’s name, did she need the money, and what the. devil did she spend it on? He would have to find her and question her: it was impossible to keep this sort of thing to himself. If only Katherine were here, she would know how to deal with it.

Fanny and Bill were sitting in the lounge of the hotel, with Miss Goodwin, Fanny’s friend, and Tom Callaghan in attendance as usual. Herbert was out somewhere. If Miss Goodwin had not been there Henry might have asked advice from Bill and Tom, but he could not discuss anything so painful and intimate before a stranger.

“Where’s mother?” he said diffidently.

“In her room, I think,” said Fanny. “Where have you been? We were all quite worried. You look so tired.”

“Nerves,” said Tom. “Poor old Henry has had everything in life go smoothly up to now, and he’s not certain what today will bring forth.”

Henry did not answer. He was in no mood now for mockery. He went upstairs to the first floor of the hotel and along the corridor to his mother’s room, and knocked at the door. Although she had only occupied it for three nights, the bedroom was already a shambles. There were shoes strewn about the floor, clothes on all the chairs, and the inevitable litter of hairpins, gloves, velvet ribbons, and handkerchiefs on the dressing-table. Fanny-Rosa was sitting on the bed, on which she had placed her trunk, and was putting something away under a folded gown.

“The conquering hero,” she smiled, as her son entered. “Have you got a pain in your tummy, my poor boy? Your father was the same before one of the greyhound meetings. All strung up and pretending he did not care a damn whether he won or lost.”

“I haven’t come to talk about the election,” said Henry, sitting beside her on the bed. “I don’t mind what happens, one way or the other. I’ve come to talk about you.”

Fanny-Rosa raised her eyebrows, and leaving the bed, she strolled over to the dressing-table and began to do her hair.

“I went into Owen Williams’ just now, before coming here,” said Henry, “and he told me you had seen him this morning, and borrowed five hundred pounds from the firm, giving him my authority for doing so. Also that you wrote for the same sum only last quarter. Mother dear, what is it all about?”

“My dear boy, you look just like a schoolmaster,” laughed his mother. “You ought to be a supporter of Mr.

Gladstone, instead of his opponent. Yes, that younger Mr. Williams was most obliging. I am very grateful to him.”

“But I don’t understand,” said Henry. “Why on earth did you not come to me for the money, instead of going behind my back and giving my authority for something I had not promised?”

“I thought it easier that way,” said Fanny-Rosa, yawning. “Such a nuisance for you to be bothered.”

“It’s far more bother to learn that you are borrowing money from a shipping firm in such an odd way,” said her son. “Don’t you see, dear, it is not regular at all. In fact, not to mince matters, it’s completely dishonest.”

“I never understand these things,” said Fanny-Rosa carelessly. “Any sort of money transaction always appears to me to be dishonest. I have no head for figures.”

Henry watched her as she ran a comb through her cloud of white hair. She seemed to have no shame, she was as irresponsible as a child.

“Do you find it difficult to live on the income grandfather left you?” he said incredulously. “I understood that life in the south of France was so much cheaper.”

“Oh, my dear, life is never cheap anywhere,” said Fanny-Rosa, “What with little dinners, and going about, and one thing and another, I am always short.”

She was being persistently vague on purpose, thought Henry; she was not going to commit herself.

“You have about twelve hundred a year from my grandfather,” said Henry firmly, “and the rent of your villa, in English money, is about fifty pounds a year. Say your servants-there’s a cook and a little girl, isn’t there?-and your food cost you a hundred; clothes, the small amount of entertaining you can do, a further fifty; that’s only two hundred pounds gone, mother, and a clear thousand in hand. What have you done with it all, that you have been obliged to borrow a thousand pounds from Owen Williams?”

“It goes, I tell you,” said Fanny-Rosa.

“Don’t ask me how or why.

I have not the slightest idea. Henry, dear boy, do put off that school, master expression, it is so unbecoming, and when you greet your constituents directly you must be your usual smiling, charming self. You are sitting on my ear-rings, darling; throw them across to me, will you?”

She pleaded softly, looking at him out of the corner of her eyes, and shrugging his shoulders, he rose from the bed, the ear-rings in his hand, and fastened them gently in her ears.

“You have hands like your father,” she said: “now I know why your Katherine loves you… . May you always be happy together.”

He stared at her face in the looking-glass. Was that a very small tear in the corner of her eye, and she smiling all the while?

“Mother,” he said impulsively, “why don’t you give up this life in the south of Prance, and come and live with us at Clonmere ? Katherine would love to have you, and you know you belong there, to your own country.”

Fanny-Rosa shook her head.

“Don’t be absurd,” she said lightly. “My present existence suits me to the ground. Everyone and everything so amusing. Anyway, it’s a great mistake for a mother to live with her son. I tried it once, and I failed. Which of these bonnets shall I wear this evening?”

“Never mind about the bonnets. Mother, will you change your mind and come and live with us? You could have your own rooms, do exactly as you please, and no one would interfere with you.”

“No, darling.”

“Will you tell me then what you are doing with your money?”

“Oh, Henry, don’t harp so… . Look, it’s half-past five; we ought to be at the Town Hall. Run down and tell the others to get ready.

I love your Tom Callaghan; so much more understanding than the usual run of parsons. You have always been lucky in your friends. Johnnie never made any…

“Kiss me, my funny dear serious son, and don’t worry about me any more. I won’t bother Mr. Owen Williams again, I promise you. This coming season will make up for last, I know it will.”

“Why, what do you mean?” smiled Henry. “You talk like a shopkeeper, as though you expected to make some money.”

She flashed him a vivid smile, and patted the side of her hair.

“Let’s go and find the others,” she said, “and don’t forget to put a flower in your buttonhole. Praise God I have such good-looking children.”

It was useless, thought Henry, as he followed her downstairs, to try to get anything out of her. She just put up barriers all the time. She smiled, and looked softly at you, and made some irrelevant remark, but what went on within that head of hers you would never know. And he wondered whether his father, who had loved her so well, had found her the same, and whether, even when they were closest, she had eluded him….