Long Goodbyes (7 page)

The clock chimed midday. The valises were ready by the front door. I had dressed Jack in his comfortable travelling suit, and he sat as if deep in thought in the armchair by the leaded window looking into the garden. Grace descended, a lace handkerchief dabbing at her powdered cheeks. She nodded and bent to some minor task at a parcel she intended to carry with her. There was nothing more to be done; it was just a matter of awaiting Mr Benjamin’s pony and trap. I felt choked, sad beyond words. I wanted the moment of separation to be over.

‘I wondered if…?’ Grace began, but her words dried up. I turned to find her standing awkwardly by the dining table, hands clasped beneath her bosom, her customary stiffness suddenly relaxed, as if a veil had been lifted to reveal the vulnerable woman beneath, but then she shook her head. ’Never mind,’ she said quickly. ‘It is nothing.’

‘Please,’ I said, ‘tell me. I can see that you are troubled.’ Indeed, I had never seen this side of her. She looked like a woman in fear of some terrible consequence.
 

‘I just wondered if you had heard it too. The crying. In the night. Oh, but how silly it sounds in the light of day. I heard it distinctly - I thought perhaps a neighbour’s child had got itself lost. I came down and went into the garden but there was nothing. Nothing that could have made that sound…’ she finished, confused, her hands busy at the buttons of her dress.

I was much taken aback. ‘Grace, I heard nothing at all. A dream, that is all. You were dreaming the sound.’

‘No.’
 

‘An animal then, a stray sheep from the field. It has happened before.’

‘I know the voice of a child.’

‘Of course. I cannot explain it, then. You must put it down to some peculiarity of the wind. Sound can carry a long way given the right conditions.’

‘Maybe,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘I simply do not know.’
 

A familiar clip clop in the lane and a jingle of reins ended our strange conversation. Grace’s relief was clear.

‘But here is Benjamin. Now, Jenny, help your husband outside.’

I could not bear the silence of the cottage. Once the trap had rounded the corner I prepared myself for the short walk to Orla’s. A cardigan, my walking shoes, a cake tin with half its contents remaining. A closing of the door. A tear. And I was walking away, walking away from Jack. It felt like a separation of my soul from its maker.
Take heart
, I told myself.
You have been through worse than this.

Ahead of me a ginger-haired boy was sitting on the bench by the green. The sun slanted and obliged me to shield my eyes. When I looked again the child was gone.

‘I feel terribly guilty,’ Orla declared. ‘You must consider me the most fragile of creatures.’

I shook my head. ‘You would do the same for me, would you not?’ And I knew she would.
 

Dusk had fallen and by now Jack and Grace would be far away, almost at Ringaskiddy where they were to spend the night before boarding the steamer. What troubled me most was the thought that Jack would be unaware of my absence. Our goodbyes had been perfunctory; he did not know me and may as well have been parting from one of his subalterns. I prayed that Grace would treat him gently. My face must have given me away, for Orla was looking at me oddly.

‘And Jack was happy to go with Grace?’

‘He was. He would have gone anywhere with anyone, I fear.’

‘But he was well? In himself, I mean.’

‘Well enough, I think, yes.’

She seemed satisfied at this and we went on to eat a simple meal which Orla had prepared in anticipation. I noticed that she ate very little, although I found my own appetite oddly unaffected by the emotional upheaval of the day. When we had cleared away the trappings of our supper we sat together in the lounge. I could not help but recall the evening of Jack’s collapse and the anxious and fruitless faith I had placed in the local doctor. As we sat with the onset of dusk ushering the shadows ever inward I could see in my mind’s eye the expression etched upon Jack’s face as he gazed through the picture window to the expanse of garden beyond the glass. What had he seen?

Orla said, ‘Shall I fetch us something to drink? A toast to our absent husbands would not be inappropriate.’

‘Bless you, Orla. A little strong sustenance - as we used to call it in Belgium - would not go amiss.’

As Orla busied herself preparing the drinks I could hear a dog barking somewhere. Conall. My nightmare came back to me and I shuddered at the memory.
 

‘Don’t worry,’ Orla said, reading my expression. ‘He’s locked up in the yard. You are quite safe.’

‘I know. I had a bad dream. I fear that Conall doesn’t like me very much.’

‘It’s odd. He’s such a friendly dog.’

‘
Is
it odd, Orla?’

She looked at me curiously, and changed the subject. ‘How did you bear it, the war?’ she asked, and handed me a glass of clear liqueur.
 

‘Bear it?’ I replied. ‘What in particular?’

‘The field hospital. Those poor young boys. The blood. All of it.’

I took a sip of liqueur and considered the question. The drink had a strong, nutty flavour, not at all unpleasant, and made my throat tingle as I swallowed. ’Truthfully? I don’t know. I think we were so busy we hadn’t time to reflect. After the first day I think that most of us just got on with it.’

Orla sat down and shook her head. She held her glass in a very proper manner, her fingers delicately supporting the stem. I had often noticed how slim and articulate were her fingers, how expressive and artistic. I remembered a remark of Jack’s, that he had always admired artistic women. ‘I could never have worked in such a place,’ she said. ‘Never.’

‘If I had not volunteered I would never have met Jack.’

‘Of course. It was meant to be. Tell me, did you ever see the enemy?’

‘Once. A German pilot came to us, badly burned. I couldn’t see him as the enemy - he was so young. And brave.’ I felt a wash of emotion as the memory came back. ‘He died two days later. All he said was ‘mother’.
Mutti
.’

‘It is a foul thing, war.’ Orla rose to light candles, moving gracefully around the room in little pools of newly established light.

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘But not many truly understand the nature of it; one has to experience it at first hand, you see. There is no glamour, Orla, no honour in dying the kind of deaths I witnessed each day. It is an ugly, unnatural thing. But it seems right and fitting that your William has been accorded the privilege of contributing to its ending - and at such lofty heights.’

‘It is hard for William.’ Orla returned to her seat. ‘He wanted a quiet life. But Lloyd George knew of him, you see. It was only a matter of how quickly George attained a position of power and influence, and after that simply a matter of time.’
 

‘William must be held in high regard,’ I said. ‘What is his area of expertise?’

Orla looked down at her hands. ‘I shouldn’t say, really. But it is only the two of us here, is it not?’ She brightened. ‘Very well. William is a naval man. Lloyd George is pushing home the necessity of the convoy as the safest insurance against the U-boats. He is quite convinced that such an arrangement will protect our shipping and bring an earlier end to the war.’

‘I know little of such things, but I am sure William will do all that is required of him, and to a high standard.’

Orla played with a strand of her auburn hair. ’You are kind to say so. He will, of course, do his duty, but he had hoped to put distance between ourselves and Westminster. It is as if our old lives are calling us back, as if they cannot let us go.’

The candlelight flickered as a gust of wind found the gaps around the window frames. Rain began to beat softly against the panes.

‘A storm is on its way,’ Orla observed. ‘But we are snug together. You
will
stay the night, Jenny, will you not?’

I smiled. ‘If it would comfort you. But you haven’t yet told me why you are fearful of being on your own.’
 
Although a part of me wished to remain ignorant, I sensed an opportunity to coax Orla into revealing whatever she and her husband had been withholding from us.
 

‘No. I have not.’ She dropped her gaze once again and pursed her lips.

‘There is something I was going to tell you the other day.’

‘Oh?’ She looked up, her expression suddenly wary.

‘I went up to the house.’

‘Yes. William told me.’

‘But I did not tell him what I had seen and heard.’

Orla’s face drained of colour. I had no wish to upset my dear friend, but I realised that I had to press home my advantage. I sensed that she would be candid if I were to impress my own experience upon her.
 

I said, ‘I think he already knew what I had seen and heard. Am I right?’

She nodded non-committally, a quick, jerky movement, like that of a bird.

‘Perhaps you had better tell me the whole story?’

Orla moistened her lips. ‘Very well. I shall tell you.’ She got up and drew the heavy curtains across the picture window. Then in one motion she drained her glass, took a deep breath and, as if preparing for a recital, lifted her chin a fraction and began.
 

‘It was the winter of 1846. A harsh winter. William has already told you of the famine. Well, his namesake,
Sir
William, had, unusually, chosen to winter in Ireland. There were parties at the house, such grand affairs by all account. And the common folk were dying in great numbers - women, children, and their menfolk. You can imagine the strength of resentment against Sir William and his enforcers, the estate managers who were no more than bullies and brigands themselves. And yet the evictions went on as the workers failed to pay up. They had little produce, and consequently no money. It is said that when the thaw came in early February the number of exposed bodies, those who had simply fallen by the roadside and died of starvation and exposure, numbered in the hundreds, and that just in the local area.

‘Sir William, however had found himself in an unusual situation that winter. He had formed an attachment to a tenant whose husband had absconded earlier in the year. They had been a young couple, childless, and she was very pretty. Her name was…’ At this point Orla hesitated and looked away, as if casting about for someone else to relieve her of her burden.

I frowned, slightly vexed at her reluctance. ‘Go on, Orla. What was her name?’

Orla moistened her lips. ‘Her name was Jennifer. Jennifer O’Brien.’

My pulse quickened a little at this revelation. I nodded.

‘Sir William paid her much attention, it is said. He made sure that she was warm and well supplied with food.’

‘Uncharacteristically generous,’ I murmured.

‘Just so,’ Orla nodded. ‘But there was her wider family to contend with. They lived on the Moycullen estate; her two brothers, her father who was old and infirm, and her mother. They were starving, like most folk, living in squalor. Jennifer would share what she was given with her family and lived in fear of Sir William finding out.’

‘And where was Jennifer O’Brien living at that time?’

Orla swallowed hard and I detected a slight tremor in her hands as she prepared to reveal what I had already guessed.

‘The cottage. Your cottage. They lived there, Jenny, from the time it was built. You see, Jennifer O’Brien’s husband had been a good workman, a carpenter. He had excelled himself at Kilmareich House, proved himself very useful - and cheap - for Sir William. It was Malachi O’Brien’s hands which had refurbished the main staircase and banisters. His hands which had made the elegant dining room table and chairs. Oh, he had been a useful asset to Sir William, that much is for sure.’

‘What happened?’

‘No one knows for certain. There is a rumour that he was enticed into some drinking game with Sir William’s cronies and missed his footing on the cliff, but that seems unlikely. They would hardly have mixed it with his sort, however impressed they might have been at his carpentry skills. But it is generally believed that Sir William had something to do with his disappearance.’

‘Even though he had been so highly prized?’ And then I thought of King David and his Bathsheba, and I knew the answer.

‘The man was evil, Jenny.’

A rumble of thunder sounded in the distance and Conall let out a noise somewhere between a whimper and a bark.

‘He hates thunder, poor beast.’
 

‘What happened, Orla? I need to know.’

‘Yes. In the weeks after Malachi O’Brien vanished Sir William was seen on many occasions paying his respects to Malachi’s grieving wife. After a period of time it was clear that the visits were more than just social etiquette.’

My hand rested upon my belly as Orla was speaking. I felt a cold dread seeping through every part of me, and a sense of terrible panic. I picked up my glass to find it empty.

‘Yes, I think perhaps we shall need a little top-up,’ Orla said.

Once my glass had been refilled she went on. ‘You have already guessed the outcome. Jennifer O’Brien was with child. But it was hardly a joy for her; she resented the unborn infant, you see, understandably so. And so she began a campaign of refusal Sir William was powerless to overturn.’

‘I don’t understand. What kind of campaign?’

‘She refused to eat. As I have already mentioned, Sir William had provided a good supply for the O’Brien household in the past and now he had even more reason to do so. His unborn child had to be nourished.’

My own stomach felt as if it had been filled with cold stone as Orla apprised me of these facts. I remembered the tureen, the rotting meal left upon my table. I remembered the presence in the corner of the parlour that night, the creak of the chair.
 

Not dreams.
 

Not my imagination.

‘Jenny. Are you all right?’

Orla was by my side. My breathing was laboured and my hand went to my throat. I felt such terror as never before. Outside the storm raged indifferently, sheets of rain gusting ferociously against the walls of our fragile refuge. A clap of thunder crashed overhead and made us both jump. Only the dog was silent, cowed by the intensity of the elements.