Songs of Love and War (47 page)

Then the thought of going home floated to the surface of her mind like a cork. For a fleeting moment her heart lurched with yearning for the farmhouse and her grandmother’s stew, the smell
of wet soil and cows, the sound of her brothers discussing the sorry state of Ireland over tumblers of stout. She longed for the taste of buttermilk and soda bread, the thud of dancing feet, the
stirring crescendo of singing voices, the heart-wrenching strains of a lone fiddle. But the cork sank as quickly as it had risen. Going home now was impossible. She was no longer the girl she had
been. She had no life left in Ireland. All that remained there was pain and loss, memories of Jack, Mr Deverill and the baby she had been forced to give away and the one who had died. Here she had
reinvented herself. She liked who she was. How could she go back in all her fine clothes and sleep in her old bed with the straw mattress? Her life was so different now and she was used to certain
luxuries. As much as she tried to avoid it, her wealth would inevitably set her apart from Rosetta; what would it do to her family? She had moved on and the door had closed behind her, this time
for good.

When the service was over she went to the front and lit four candles for her family, two for the children she had given birth to and a seventh for her father’s soul, may he rest in peace.
Despondently, she began to walk out of the church. Just as she neared the door she caught eyes with a silver-haired gentleman with a tidy grey beard, who smiled at her kindly. ‘You’re
not meant to look sad at Christmas, young lady,’ he said.

‘I’m not sad,’ she replied, putting her head down and walking into the December sunshine.

‘Like hell you’re not sad,’ he persisted, walking alongside her. ‘I’ve been watching you. If that’s your happy face what does your sad face look like?’
He put out his hand. ‘Mr Lockwood.’

Bridie looked at his fine coat, expensive suit and hat, the umbrella with the silver collar engraved with initials and shook his hand. ‘Miss Doyle,’ she replied.

‘Oh, I know who you are.’ He grinned. ‘Quite a famous lady, aren’t you?’ Bridie blushed. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you. You just look
so alone. I don’t like to see a woman on her own, looking sad. Especially such a pretty one.’ She smiled, won over by his charm and the shiny green car that waited for him on the kerb
with a watchful chauffeur standing to attention in his starched uniform and cap, even on Christmas Day. ‘There, that’s better. Now, you only live a block away from here so allow me to
walk you to your door.’ Mr Lockwood waved at the chauffeur. ‘I’m going to walk, Maxwell, so you might as well go home,’ he said. The chauffeur climbed into the car and
motored off through the slush.

Bridie cast her eyes around the street. It was empty now. Everyone had returned home for Christmas lunch. She put her hands in her coat pockets and walked on. ‘You look like you’re
on your own too, Mr Lockwood,’ she said with a grin.

‘My son has run on ahead. He’s keen to put something in his stomach. I have four children but three are scattered all over. A son in Canada and two daughters, one on the West Coast,
the other down South. Ashley is my youngest.’ He settled his twinkling grey eyes on Bridie’s house. ‘We’re almost neighbours, you and I. I knew Mrs Grimsby. She was a
strong-willed woman, that’s for sure. No one pushed her around. I always found this house a little austere, though. Something about the tower. It looks like a witch’s hat.’

Bridie laughed. ‘That’s just what I thought when I first saw it. But it doesn’t frighten me now.’

‘I don’t imagine much frightens you, Miss Doyle.’ He looked down at Bridie and smiled sympathetically. ‘You sure you’re not lonely in there all on your
own?’

‘Oh, I’m not on my own, Mr Lockwood. I have lots of friends and—’

‘Of course you do,’ he said, cutting her off. ‘A pretty, wealthy young woman such as yourself must have hundreds of friends.’ He chuckled in a world-weary manner.
‘But who are you spending Christmas with? From what I understand your family is in Ireland.’

‘Yes, they . . .’

‘I’m a Christian man, Miss Doyle. I would like to extend you an invitation to Christmas lunch. It’s not right that a young woman like you should be alone on Christmas Day. My
son Ashley will be delighted to have a pretty girl at the table and I’d be grateful for the company. Ashley and I are an uninspiring couple, just the two of us.’

‘Isn’t there a Mrs Lockwood?’ Bridie asked.

‘I’m afraid there is no Mrs Lockwood. I’m a widower.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Bridie apologized.

‘No need. Life ebbs and flows. We all come, we all go. You’ll make an old man happy. What do you say, Miss Doyle? Will you come and share our Christmas feast?’ There was
something jaunty about him. An amused twinkle in his eye, a raffish crookedness to his smile, a complete lack of self-doubt; he knew who she was and he presumably wanted her for his son. Bridie was
curious. She liked this Mr Lockwood. She liked his manner. Perhaps she’d like his son. Maybe he’d be rich enough for her, but perhaps . . .

With a smile she linked her arm through his. ‘How very generous of you, Mr Lockwood. I’d love to come and share your Christmas feast and meet your son. But you know what we say in
Ireland: the older the fiddle the sweeter the tune.’

Mr Lockwood chuckled and led her down the wet street. ‘You’ve clearly brought the charm of the Irish with you, Miss Doyle.’ He patted her hand. ‘We can all benefit from a
touch of that.’

London, England, 1925

London looked like a magical kingdom made out of sugar. The streets were covered in a thick layer of snow and the flakes were still falling, twirling on the wind, illuminated
like gilded feathers in the golden aura of the street lamps. They settled onto the bare branches of the plane and horse chestnut trees in the communal gardens and insulated the spring bulbs that
hibernated beneath the soil along with dormice and hedgehogs, sleeping through the cold winter in their warm holes.

Kitty gazed out of the window of her Notting Hill house on Ladbroke Square. It wasn’t a stylish address but she didn’t care. The development of the Ladbroke family farmland in the
mid-nineteenth century had originally been intended as a fashionable suburb of London but it hadn’t yet attracted the wealthy Londoners who preferred to live nearer the centre in Mayfair and
Belgravia. However, it appealed to the upper middle classes who could live in large Belgravia-style houses for a fraction of the price. Kitty was just happy to be far away from her mother who now
resided in Victoria’s townhouse in Belgravia during the Season and in her country house in Kent for the rest of the year. Her father only appeared in London for occasions such as
Harry’s wedding and Royal Ascot. Otherwise he remained at Castle Deverill in the Hunting Lodge, in which his wife hadn’t set so much as a toe since the fire. Kitty had received no
correspondence from him. He hadn’t even come to her wedding. His rejection hurt her deeply but she was used to burying her pain – and she had the love of little Jack and Robert to
console her. Adeline had been too frail to travel, but from her beloved grandmother Kitty received regular letters; she treasured every one.

It had been five months since Florence. Five months since she had told Robert about Michael Doyle. Five months of patience, compassion and restraint that must have been a great trial for her new
husband. But Kitty couldn’t let him touch her. She reassured him that she would, but she couldn’t say when that moment would come. Sometimes, as she lay in bed staring up at the
ceiling, she wondered whether it might
never
come. Michael Doyle had stolen more than her virginity that morning; he had stolen her essence.

Kitty did not love Robert in the way that she loved Jack, and she didn’t expect to. She and Jack’s love had been forged in the innocence of childhood and driven deeper with every
test God had seen fit to send them. Robert could never compete with that. But he was a devoted father to little Jack and the boy loved him unreservedly. She hoped that, in time, she would grow to
love him too.

As soon as it was light she walked out into the flurry, wrapped snugly in a thick coat. The gardens were quiet and unspoiled. A red-breasted robin hopped about in search of food, leaving barely
a print in the snow, and a blackbird watched her from the top of a fir tree. Kitty inhaled the cold air and felt her spirits soar with the beauty of this secret white world in the heart of the busy
city. She exhaled luxuriously and her anxiety was released into the damp atmosphere in a thick cloud of fog. The tension in her shoulders melted away as she stood in the middle of the garden,
allowing the eternal stillness of nature to resonate with the eternal stillness deep inside her. How her heart ached with longing for the countryside.

Suddenly, something bright caught her eye. She turned to see a small, vibrating orb dancing above the bushes. She stared at it in wonder, recognizing it at once as a nature spirit. She
hadn’t seen one of those since childhood. There had been plenty playing about the flowers at Castle Deverill. With rising excitement she walked softly through the snow and crouched down,
smiling with the innocence of her girlhood long gone.

It was at that moment of finally rediscovering her gift that she realized with all clarity of mind and certainty of heart that her future was not here in this concrete metropolis, but at Castle
Deverill. She felt her chest expand with a bubbling joy, like the chuckling stream that wound its way through Ballinakelly to the sea, and she laughed out loud. The blackbird began to sing from the
fir tree and the robin flew off into the snow-covered bushes. She knew now that it didn’t matter what her father thought, or that the castle was no longer fit to live in, because she belonged
there. She loved it unconditionally. She would never be happy anywhere else.

With her heart full of optimism she ran back into the house where Robert was sitting at the dining-room table, reading the papers. He looked up from
The Times
with surprise. He
hadn’t seen Kitty this animated since they married. ‘Robert!’ she exclaimed, throwing her arms around him and making him put the paper down. ‘You remember you said
you’d give me Ireland if you could?’

‘Yes?’ he replied, taking off his reading glasses.

‘Well, you can.’

‘Can I?’

She pulled out the chair beside him. ‘I want to go home,’ she told him. ‘I know we can be happy there. You can write. You’ll be inspired in Ireland much more than in this
dreary city.’

Robert smiled and touched her face. ‘If that’s what you want, Kitty, we’ll go,’ he said.

‘I want Jack to know where he comes from. Castle Deverill is in his blood. But I need you to go and talk to Papa. I know you can persuade him. Uncle Rupert’s house is vacant. No
one’s lived in it for ten years. Elspeth told me it’s all boarded up. Grandma couldn’t bear to go in there after Uncle Rupert was killed, so she left it just as it was. But
it’s part of the estate. It’s in my father’s power to gift it to me. I know he will
if you
ask.’

Robert was so keen to please his new wife that he made the arrangements to travel immediately. They decided not to tell anyone of their plans. They would simply leave quietly and then, when
everything was sorted out, inform Harry, Beatrice and Celia. Kitty packed with the help of her maid. When they were ready Kitty and Robert left London with little Jack and Hetty, Kitty’s
lady’s maid and Robert’s valet Bridgeman – a small retinue of servants made possible by the modest annuity Robert received from his father. Robert would send for the rest of the
household when they had found a home. In the meantime they would stay with Elspeth and Peter.

When Kitty stepped off the boat onto Irish soil the great swell of longing, which had been confined for so long behind a dam of restraint, rose beyond all control, bringing
tears of joy and relief. She turned her face towards the soft rain and felt the opening of her heart, like the gentle unfolding of a poppy in the heat of the sun. She was home at last.

Elspeth had sent their chauffeur to pick them up. Bridgeman would follow in a hackney cab with the luggage. Kitty sat in the back seat holding Robert’s hand, gazing out of the window at
the velvet green hills whose heather-coated summits were shrouded in mist. The trees were bare, their branches knobbly and glistening in the drizzle. Big black rooks hopped about the roof of an
abandoned farmhouse. Cows grazed in fields of thick grass and woolly sheep were white dots on the hillsides, camouflaged among the rocks. Kitty was too emotional to speak. Occasionally she put her
hand to her chest and sighed, as if every sight triggered memories she wanted to hold on to and savour. In spite of all the violence that had taken place there, Ireland still had the power to seize
her heart with its constant beauty.

Peter and Elspeth MacCartain’s neo-Palladian castle was a weathered old building of little charm. The grey walls were austere and bleak, the tall windows foggy like the failing eyes of an
old man. It sat on the top of a hill without the luxury of trees to shelter it from the sharp winter winds and enhance its appeal. It looked isolated and abandoned, like a colonel deserted by his
soldiers, alone with the years that had gradually robbed him of his gloss. Once it had rivalled Castle Deverill in its splendour, but now there were no gardens, no lovingly tended lawns, nothing
that alluded to its former prestige, only fields of sheep. It made Kitty feel a tremendous sorrow, as if this castle was symbolic of all that the Anglo-Irish had lost in the War of
Independence.

As soon as the car drew up outside the front door, Elspeth flew down the steps to greet them. She embraced her sister with excitement, barely pausing for breath. ‘I’m so happy
you’ve come to stay, Kitty. It’s lovely to see you and little Jack. We’re going to have such fun. Peter has the perfect mare for you to ride. You’ll love her, she goes like
the wind. I’m sure you’re going to want to hunt. There are plenty of snipe for you, Robert. Do you shoot? I can’t recall. Do come inside. There’s a lovely fire in the
drawing room.’ She laughed nervously. ‘We tend to use only a small number of rooms because it’s so cold! We run from one to the other like mice. But of course you don’t mind
the damp, do you, Kitty?’