Wicked Pleasures (41 page)

‘I’m going to like it here,’ she said.

She had booked them into the Hillskellyn Farmhouse Hotel; they reached there rather late, as Max had insisted on visiting Blarney on the way, and making the eighty-six-foot ascent up to the castle battlements in order to kiss the stone. Hillskellyn was a small Georgian house, halfway between Cork itself and Bandon, and not remotely like the rather rickety tumbledown place she had imagined. They ate dinner (smoked salmon, grouse and syllabub, served with a series of delicious wines) in a dining room of such perfect proportions it would have sat well in Hartest. After dinner, they sat by an immense fire in the drawing room and drank Gaelic coffee; Charlotte looked at Max, as he sprawled in the chair opposite her, and thought how grown up he looked suddenly, and what an agreeable companion he was, and sighed.

‘What on earth was that for?’ said Max. ‘I feel like jumping for joy, not sighing.’

‘Oh – nothing.’

‘OK. It was for nothing. Now then, are you finally going to tell me what you’re doing here?’

‘Yes I am. But you’re going to need your glass refilled first. Hold onto your seat, Max, you’re in for a bit of a bumpy ride.’

‘Blimey,’ said Max, when the very long conversation had finally finished. ‘Cor blimey.’

‘That’s a very elegant response, Max.’

‘Well, I know.’ He was very pale suddenly, and clearly and determinedly making a great effort to be lighthearted, to be seen to take the news in his stride. ‘Clearly I’m not quite the elegant person I thought I was.’

‘Oh, I don’t think any of it should alter your personal style in any way,’ said Charlotte, responding to his mood with care.

‘Well – I don’t know. I mean dear old Dad might have been a bank clerk. Or a dustman. I’m not a viscount at all. Not a genuine one. I’m a fake. What a turn-up for the books.’

‘Well, I know,’ said Charlotte slowly. ‘But you’re still called the Viscount Hadleigh. You’re still going to inherit and everything. You look like an earl. You look just like Daddy. That’s what had us fooled for so long. I don’t think anything’s going to change for you.’

‘I suppose,’ said Max rather slowly, ‘I suppose that’s why I’m so thick.’

‘Max, really! That’s a ridiculously snobbish thing to say. There are a great many thick earls in the stately homes of England.’

‘Yes, but not at Hartest. Dad – Alexander is very clever. And Mummy was clever too. And gifted. Creative. I’m not any of those things.’ He kicked the hearth moodily. ‘I had begun to wonder. Now I know. Good God. Good God. I wish you hadn’t told me.’

‘Oh Max, don’t be silly. I had to tell you. I waited as long as I could.’

‘Why did you have to tell me? I was perfectly happy before.’

‘Well, you can be perfectly happy again.’

‘Maybe.’ He looked morose, more dejected than Charlotte could ever remember.

‘Max, I’m sorry, but I really did think you had to know. We both did. I mean sooner or later you’d have heard the gossip about Georgina and me. And wondered. It would have been a horrible shock.’

‘Well, it is a horrible shock anyway.’ He grinned at her rather shakily. ‘I don’t know how you can take it all so calmly.’

‘Max, I didn’t. At the time. It was awful. But it was over two years ago. I’ve got used to the idea now. And Georgina was very very upset. You know she’s always been Daddy’s favourite. They just adored each other. Well, they still do. She’s all right now.’

‘And he won’t – talk about it? You’ve no real idea why it all happened? What made Mummy do it?’

‘No. He won’t talk about it. I mean apart from just saying, as I told you, that yes, it was true, and she had always had a life of her own. It’s obviously horribly painful for him. And he does think, incidentally, that we all imagine you’re his own child. Of course there may be some perfectly simple explanation, like maybe he couldn’t have children, that’s what Georgie and I both thought at first, but then that doesn’t make sense, there wouldn’t have had to be all that secrecy, he would have told us, and they could just have adopted or something.’

‘God,’ said Max, ‘poor old sod. Poor old bugger. What a dance she must have led him. How horrible for him.’

‘Yes. Yes it must have been. And he’s always been so marvellous. And so loyal to her. I mean with the drinking and everything. He never, ever implied for a minute that she was anything other than perfect. I suppose that’s love.’

‘Yes, I suppose so. You don’t –’

‘I don’t what?’

‘You don’t think that I might actually be Dad’s? I mean I really do look like him.’

‘Well,’ said Charlotte, ‘honestly Max, no I don’t.’

‘Well,’ he said, standing up suddenly, looking very tall and grown up, ‘the bastard son is going to bed. He’s very tired. See you at breakfast, Charlotte. Don’t wake me up too early.’

Charlotte watched him go out of the room, walking rather more heavily than usual, his head drooping in a very un-Max-like way. She sighed. She hadn’t expected him to be quite so upset. Silly of her. Stupid. It must have been the most awful shock. He was such an arrogant little bugger under all the golden charm. And sixteen was a delicate age. Specially for boys.

Max was more cheerful in the morning. He appeared at breakfast slightly pale, but otherwise entirely himself. ‘I have decided I actually rather like the idea. I could be anyone, after all. Which is rather exciting. Maybe I have a hitherto undiscovered talent for sculpture or ballet dancing.’

‘I have to say I doubt it,’ said Charlotte, ‘but time will tell.’

‘It will. But I don’t think I want to take your route and try to find my own dear dad. I might not like him. I think I prefer being the son of the Earl of Caterham, and it’s certainly much simpler.’

‘Well,’ said Charlotte, ‘that’s up to you. Are you going to say anything to Daddy?’

‘Oh no,’ said Max, ‘I don’t see any point in that. Upsetting him and everything. It can’t be very nice for him. But I’m very excited about your search for identity. When can we leave to find the mysterious Miss Mahon?’

‘Straight away after breakfast,’ said Charlotte, relieved but slightly surprised by his swift recovery. ‘Look, Max, kippers on the menu. Or do you want bacon and eggs?’

‘Both,’ said Max.

The drive to Tellow was enchanting; they hit the glorious, heart-catching coast at Kinsale and turned west towards Clonakilty; the day was wild, with great sheets of storm clouds fighting off the sun, the sea black and grey and every shade of green, with great white bursts of water rolling up and foaming against the cliffs. The road followed the curves and curls of the coast westward, wilder and wilder now, past Ballinaspittle and the glorious Old Head of Kinsale; the tiny inland lakes were oddly calm and still, set against the wilderness of the sea.

‘Oh, I love it here,’ said Charlotte, parking the car suddenly on the edge of the road, and gazing enraptured and moody out at the sea. ‘I feel as if I’ve come home.’

‘Maybe you have,’ said Max.

They reached Skibbereen at midday and swung inland on the road to Tellow.

Watery Lane was a tiny turning, no more than a track, at the bottom of the village; it wound, steeply and true to its name, back up the hill, a stream running fast down either side of it. There was a grey stone cottage set back and tucked into a small hill of its own about half a mile along it.

‘That must be it,’ said Charlotte. ‘My God, the rain is getting worse. Get ready to run, Max.’

She parked in front of the small wooden lych gate (grown rather predictably over with wild roses), and then in spite of the driving rain and her own warning to Max, walked rather slowly up to the front door. She suddenly felt oddly frightened, and in awe at what she was undertaking.

The bell was a pull; its jangle had died away altogether before they heard a latch being clicked up. It was a stable door; the top swung gently back, to reveal Maura Mahon’s gently smiling face scarcely reaching over the bottom half. It was a sweet, rosy face, with fiercely bright green eyes, and surrounded with tight carefully arranged curls; it took Charlotte a little while to realize that its owner was not standing but sitting, and that her seat was a wheelchair. Miss Mahon was very thin, and her little stick-like legs, twisted with arthritis, looked most painfully useless. But her smile was radiant, and her eyes snapped with pleasure at the sight of her visitors. Charlotte fought to find her voice, which seemed to be eluding her.

‘Miss Mahon?’

‘Yes, this is she.’

‘I’m Charlotte Welles, Miss Mahon. This is my brother Max. May we come in for a little while?’

‘For more than a little while, I hope. How brave of you to come on such a dreadful day.’

They sat by the fire and looked around them fascinated; the room was a shrine to what was presumably the Mahon family. Where there was a space on the wall, a surface on a table, there was a photograph, a miniature, a sampler: sepia Victorian photographs sat side by side with lurid school snaps, wedding photographs with christening ones, single portraits with huge family gatherings. A firescreen exquisitely worked with a picture of the cottage was signed off (in silken thread) ‘Amy Mahon, aged 8, 1862’. Another showed a silver dove, with the words ‘Desmond and Maureen, Silver Wedding. 1850–1875. Whom God hath joined together’. And over the stone fireplace, hung very much in pride of place, was a picture of the Queen when she had been Princess Elizabeth, smiling and shaking a young woman’s hand.

‘I wonder who that can be,’ said Charlotte.

‘It’s me,’ said Maura Mahon.

‘When did you meet the Queen?’ said Max.

‘Oh, when I was very much younger, as you can see, and working in Dublin. We presented her with a linen dress for the infant prince when he was born, I have the letter still, you see, there it is, on the wall. And when she came to Dublin on a visit, she came to the workshop as part of her tour.’

‘How exciting,’ said Charlotte. ‘So you worked in Dublin for very many years?’

‘Oh, very many. From let me see, 1947 to 1979. It was a wonderful time.’

‘And did you – did you make many christening robes? To order, I mean?’

‘Oh, not so very many. We mostly made the little dresses and coats, supplied the White House and just occasionally Harrods. And I took personal orders from just a few special customers. Such as your mother would have been.’

‘So – so do you actually –’ Charlotte was having trouble with her voice, it kept rising unnaturally. ‘Do you remember my mother?’

‘Oh Lady Charlotte, now that would be a small miracle. Not so very small either. You were born when?’

‘In 1962.’

‘Well now, that is twenty-one years ago. I have a fine memory, but not that fine.’

‘Oh.’ Charlotte’s voice sounded bleak.

Maura Mahon smiled at her. ‘There is no need for such dejection. I have a note of all the work I did privately. In a big ledger. A little later, when we have had our tea, you can fetch it for me, it’s upstairs, and I don’t venture there very often these days. Now tell me exactly what you are doing in County Cork, and where you are going. And I hope you have brought your robe with you, so that I can see it. I hope it doesn’t sound too terribly big-headed, but I do love to meet up with my own work.’

It was an hour before Charlotte managed to extricate herself from the conversation and go upstairs to Maura Mahon’s tiny bedroom.

‘Well, it’s no longer my bedroom of course, and I miss it, but there we are. The ledger is under the bed and I fear it may be a little dusty, but you won’t mind that too much, I don’t suppose.’

‘Of course not,’ said Charlotte.

The book under Maura Mahon’s high brass bed was huge, thick, leathercovered, and indeed a little dusty; she wiped it with her sleeve and, looking at it in a kind of awe, fearful for what it might not contain, went slowly downstairs. ‘Here it is,’ she said. ‘How far back does it go?’

‘Oh, to 1947. It has a few stories to tell, that book. Look, here we are, a wedding dress for the bride of Lord Kilkirk, and see, a christening robe for his baby son, and then, and this is a wonderful thing for me, another wedding dress for that baby’s bride. I feel I am a part of so many histories, and it makes me very proud. Now then, my dear, 1962, where are we, yes, let’s see. Ah now, a fair lot of table linen; some hand-embroidered sheets; people don’t often want those these days; and – yes, here we are. A christening robe. And another. My goodness, would you believe such a thing, I did three that year. There must have been some write-up in one of the magazines. That always had a great effect. Which month were you born, Lady Charlotte?’