I reach the hotel and hurry to my room. I don’t want to speak to anyone. I want to be left alone. I am relieved that I am not moving to Kitty’s tonight. That I have the whole evening on my own to hold that book in front of a mirror.
I shrug off my coat and kick off my shoes. There is a small mirror hanging on the wall. I take it down and carry it to the bed, where I lie against the pillows with my feet up and open the diary. I am nervous. What if I discover that she was pregnant? What then? Do I track down the child, my sibling? Or do I leave it alone? Will I be able to leave it alone? Can life continue as before when such a thing is known?
I put on my reading glasses and open the first page. The words, that look so strange on the paper, make perfect sense in the reflection of the mirror. It is like magic. Mother’s handwriting is neat, although it doesn’t look like hers, but that must be because she was writing backwards. It is an impressive skill.
Once again I am taken back into the past. It is summer at Castle Deverill and I almost feel I am there.
Chapter 9
Castle Deverill
The Past
It was a damp, misty morning in June. Castle Deverill shivered in the soft rain while the birds tweeted gleefully in gratitude for the abundance of insects and the lawns full of worms. The fireplace in the drawing room was empty. The log basket, piled high with sycamore, beech and oak to fuel the winter fires, remained untouched now that it was summer. Arethusa, wrapped in a thick shawl, knelt on the rug with her mother, aunts and Charlotte, sorting through boxes of socks, which the women of the Ballinakelly Needlework Guild had knitted for the poor. Adeline, who was president of the guild, had bought the wool and paid the women a shilling a pair, but there didn’t appear to be a matching pair among them. ‘Can none of the women knit two socks alike?’ complained Hazel, holding up a couple of blue socks, one with a long foot and short leg, the other with a short foot and long leg. ‘I’m sure the knitter meant for these two to go together,’ she said.
‘It’s not worth doing if one can’t do it properly,’ complained Laurel, sighing reproachfully.
‘I don’t think the poor will mind,’ said Poppy, glancing at Adeline, whose eyes were on the sky. ‘Do stop looking out of the window, Adeline. The rain will move on by lunchtime, I assure you. It always does.’
‘And I who love rain,’ said Adeline. ‘It’s so silly. But the thought of having seven hundred tenants and their families for tea on a sodden lawn in the pouring rain is dreadful. I just want everyone to have a lovely time.’
‘They’ll be so happy with the cakes they won’t mind,’ said Arethusa, finding the smallest sock, fit only for a tiny baby, and holding it up with a grin. ‘This is for one of your fairies, Mama,’ she said.
‘Oh, that won’t do for a fairy,’ said Adeline, putting away her worries about the weather and laughing at her daughter’s impish game. ‘It’s much too big. It will swamp the poor thing!’
‘A sleeping-sock then,’ Arethusa added. ‘You can put a whole fairy family in here and they’ll be snug all winter.’
‘Aren’t you a tease, Tussy!’ said Hazel.
‘A tease,’ gushed Laurel. ‘One day you might see a fairy and then you’ll laugh on the other side of your face,’ she added.
‘If I see a fairy with my own eyes, Aunt Laurel, I’ll be the first to admit I was wrong – and I’ll knit sleeping-socks for the whole bally lot of them!’ Arethusa looked at Charlotte, quietly going about her work. ‘Have you any fairy socks, Charlotte?’ she asked.
Her governess smiled a small, timid smile. ‘One or two,’ she replied in a soft voice. ‘But mostly, I’ve found pairs.’
‘Then chuck me a handful from your box and I’ll go through them. This box here is full of socks made for midgets.’
There was a knock at the door and O’Flynn appeared with a grim face. ‘Madam, Mrs O’Hara says she needs to speak with you urgently.’ He inhaled through dilated nostrils because he considered the daily calls from the needy excessive and tedious. ‘She appears to be in some distress.’
The Shrubs looked at one another in alarm. It did not take much to frighten Hazel and Laurel, but Poppy, who spent much of her time with the poor, was familiar with their hardships and only feared for their welfare. The word ‘distress’ made her very anxious indeed.
Arethusa put down the fairy sock and Adeline pushed herself off the floor. ‘Send her in at once, O’Flynn,’ she said, taking a more dignified seat on the sofa and waiting apprehensively for the distressed woman to appear.
A moment later Mary O’Hara bustled into the room in a soaking black dress, its hem caked with mud from her walk over the hills, wringing her coarse hands in agitation. Her black hair was matted and her stricken face grubby with tears. She was pale and thin and visibly trembling. ‘Forgive me for disturbing you, madam,’ she said, composing herself as best she could in front of the ladies.
The sight of her made Adeline stand up. ‘What is the matter, Mary?’ she asked.
‘’Tis me daughter, she’s been taken,’ said Mary O’Hara.
Adeline was shocked. ‘Taken, by whom?’ she demanded.
‘Nuns from America. They said that Almighty God was calling her to be a nun. They said the hottest place in Purgatory is kept for them that do not heed God’s call.’
The Shrubs stared at Mary O’Hara with their mouths agape. Charlotte did not look particularly shocked, just sad. Arethusa got to her feet and rushed to the woman’s side. She put an arm around her. ‘We’ll get her back,’ she promised, trying to give comfort with a squeeze.
‘Tussy,’ said Adeline. Arethusa ignored the warning tone in her mother’s voice. She knew she shouldn’t be making promises she couldn’t keep or touching this poor creature who might not be well, but she couldn’t stand by and do nothing.
‘This is terrible,’ said Poppy, her empathy such that she felt the woman’s pain as if it were her own.
‘Wolves have descended on the fold,’ said Laurel darkly.
‘Pirates on our shores,’ added Hazel with equal foreboding.
‘And not just me Maeve, but others too,’ Mary O’Hara continued. ‘They’ve taken eight. The flowers of Ballinakelly. Gone.’ She began to whimper.
‘Mama, we have to do something!’ Arethusa demanded. ‘They can’t just come and steal children!’
Adeline asked O’Flynn, who was standing in the doorway and listening to the woman’s story with interest, to bring a pot of tea, then told Mary O’Hara to sit down and tell them the whole story from the beginning. ‘Does Father O’Callaghan know about this?’ Adeline asked, sitting on the sofa again.
‘The whole town knows of it, but no one can do anything about it but you, madam.’
‘It’s kidnap,’ exclaimed Arethusa, outraged. ‘Pure and simple. Someone should call the Constabulary at once!’
‘Not if the girls went willingly,’ said Poppy, catching Adeline’s eye.
‘Did they go willingly, Mary?’ asked Adeline.
Laurel and Hazel pushed themselves off the rug and settled into the sofas like a pair of timid birds. This would give them nightmares for weeks! Poppy took the club fender. Charlotte remained on the floor with the socks pressed to her breast. Mary O’Hara perched on the edge of an armchair, afraid to soil the pale fabric with her dirty clothes. ‘Maeve wanted to go,’ she said, dropping her gaze into her rough hands. ‘She said she wanted to be a Bride of Christ. Them nuns had promised them sainthoods and eternal life in Heaven, God save us. Now I’ve lost me only daughter. What am I going to do without her? Me heart is as heavy as lead and in smithereens that I’ll never see me beloved Maeve again.’ She began to sob. O’Flynn came in with the tray of tea and cake and lingered for as long as possible, curious to hear more riveting details. Mary O’Hara gulped the tea and ate the cake, and Hazel gave her her own handkerchief, embroidered with the letter H, with which to wipe her eyes.
‘Think of the good Maeve will do in the convent, Mary,’ said Poppy gently. ‘Think of the peo
ple she will help. The children, whose lives will be all the better for her good works. She will make something special of her life, Mary. She will tend the sick and soothe the broken-hearted. She will give hope to the hopeless.’ But these words of encouragement, although well-intended, did not have the effect Poppy had hoped for.
Mary O’Hara flung wide her arms. ‘But what will become of me, I ask you? Me, alone in the world, without a man coming in to look after me and neither chick nor childeen to lift me poor broken heart? God help me to carry me cross in me own Calvary.’ There was nothing any of them could say to that.
When she was gone, with a large slice of cake wrapped in paper, a beam of sunlight shone through the drawing-room windows, flooding the room with light and warmth.
‘You were right, Poppy. The rain has passed,’ said Hazel cheerfully, kneeling once more on the rug and delving into the box of socks to pick up from where she had left off.
‘Now the grass will dry and everyone will have a lovely time at the tea party,’ said Laurel.
‘But what of Mary and her daughter, and the other daughters besides?’ Arethusa exclaimed, astonished that her aunts could so quickly dismiss such an upsetting scene. ‘What will become of them? Will they really not see their daughters again, ever?’
Adeline put a hand to her heart. ‘I cannot imagine the sorrow those poor mothers are suffering. It’s too dreadful to comprehend. I wish to God there was something I could do.’
‘When I worked for a family in America I heard a story about nuns going to Ireland to inspire simple Irish girls to be Brides of Heaven. It’s outrageous,’ said Charlotte. Everyone stared at her because they had quite forgotten that she was there.
‘It is outrageous,’ Poppy agreed. ‘That’s a very good word.’
‘Sadly, there is nothing any of us can do,’ said Adeline.
‘Papa will know what to do!’ Arethusa exclaimed. ‘I’ll go and find him.’
‘I’m afraid he’s as helpless as we are,’ said Adeline sadly. ‘Those girls are already on a boat bound for America, I should imagine. And if they went willingly, then we are truly powerless to stop them.’
‘Father O’Callaghan should warn the girls about these devious nuns. They should be on their mettle.’ Arethusa lifted her chin. ‘And if it were my daughter, I’d swim the Atlantic to find her and bring her back.’
Adeline smiled tenderly at Arethusa’s naivety. ‘My dear, sometimes you have to let them go. If you love them, you have to respect their free will. The hardest part of loving is letting go, because love is rarely unconditional.’
‘And those poor women don’t have the money to sail to America,’ said Poppy.
‘And neither would we,’ rejoined Hazel.
‘We certainly wouldn’t. We’re as poor as church mice,’ said Laurel with a sigh, picking up a sock and examining it with contempt.
‘Church mice who live rather well,’ Arethusa added drily, realizing that her silly aunts Hazel and Laurel had little idea of what it meant to be poor.
That afternoon, as sunshine blazed upon the lawns of Castle Deverill and dried the last raindrops on the surrounding trees and flowers, seven hundred tenants and their families, dressed in their Sunday best, swarmed onto the terrace to shake hands with their landlord. Lord and Lady Deverill greeted them graciously like a king and queen greeting their subjects. Lady Deverill, supporting herself on a stick, wore an enormous hat with feathers collected from her own exotic hens. Every time she nodded, the feathers moved up and down, giving the impression that something living had taken up residence there. The children found it especially funny and lingered close by, squealing with laughter each time the old lady moved her head. Lady Deverill, oblivious of her young audience, smiled at each tenant and repeated the same sentence over and over. ‘Lovely day, how good of you to come.’ She wore a pair of white calfskin gloves to protect herself from contagion as well as soreness, for by the end of the line she must have shaken over a thousand hands and some of them quite vigorously. She decided she would leave Adeline to shake them at the end of the day on her behalf.
Lord Deverill watched the final tenant shuffle off towards the tables of sandwiches and cake and turned to his wife. ‘You didn’t ask Father O’Callaghan, I see,’ he said.
‘Adeline wouldn’t let me,’ Elizabeth replied. ‘She said he would ruin the day. Everyone’s afraid of him. He’s got a face like a trout.’
‘Very well.’
‘And he’s probably trying to find those poor missing girls.’
‘More likely in O’Donovan’s, knocking back stout,’ said Greville. He looked into the crowd and saw Adeline moving through it like a swan among moorhens. Now there’s a woman with grace, he thought admiringly, hooking his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets and rocking on his heels. Elizabeth wasn’t really capable of working the crowd like Adeline, he thought. His wife always managed to offend by saying the wrong thing. Adeline, on the other hand, could be relied on to have the right word, the appropriate look and the well-timed departure, moving from person to person with tact and elegance. He spotted his son, Hubert, talking to the stable boys, and his grandsons Bertie and Rupert, who both found these sorts of occasions a trial, not that one would know given the show they managed to put on. Arethusa, pretty in a pale blue dress and matching hat, was chatting to a pack of young men who surrounded her like wolves around Red Riding Hood. She was throwing back her head and laughing in a very unladylike manner. This Red Riding Hood was not afraid of wolves, it seemed. In Greville’s opinion, his granddaughter was much too familiar with these people. One must maintain a certain distance, he thought to himself. One mustn’t get too close or they’ll expect too much of one. He decided to speak to Adeline about Arethusa’s behaviour. It would normally be Elizabeth’s duty to speak to their daughter-in-law, but once again, Greville did not believe her capable. It really wasn’t proper to flirt with such men, he concluded. The sooner she was wed, the better.
He swept his eyes over the guests, reluctant to plunge in any sooner than necessary. The Shrubs had come to help, as they did every year. Laurel and Hazel in their wide hats with pastel-pink ribbons flying in the breeze, their eager faces flushed beneath frilly parasols, sillier than ever. Poppy with her earnest concern, deep in conversation with a group of women, listening to their gripes and their woes. Women, he thought with a disapproving sniff, are much too sentimental. At least in that regard his wife was something of a relief. Elizabeth had no time for gripes and woes and kept the common people at arm’s length. As he finally stepped onto the lawn he thought the women in his family would do well to take a leaf out of her book. But only that one, mind you.
Arethusa managed to extricate herself from the garden party without being noticed. It was nearly over anyhow and she had played her part (and worked all the young men into a lather of excitement). Eily helped her change out of her party dress in favour of a walking dress and she hurried off towards Ballinakelly, knowing that Charlotte would assume she was still in the garden. This time she wasn’t on her way to help the poor but heading across the fields for an entirely different purpose.
Wheat was turning golden in the sun and on the hillsides cows and sheep were contentedly grazing on the long grasses and heather. A stream meandered down a slope, trickling quietly over rocks, and overhead a pair of seagulls cried into the wind. The rain had been blown away and now the sky was a royal blue with only a few feathery clouds wafting across it. Arethusa walked with a spring in her step, her skirts dancing about her ankles with each stride, a merry tune on her lips. When she reached the edge of the wood she stopped. She put her hands on her hips and looked through the trees. Then she saw him, emerging out of the thicket in a jacket and cap, a cigarette between his lips, a smile in his eyes. ‘Dermot McLoughlin,’ she said, sashaying towards him coquettishly. ‘Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.’
‘You managed to leave the party then?’ he replied, blowing smoke into the air.
She stood before him, lifted her
chin and looked him straight in the eye. ‘I thought there might be something more interesting to do in this wood,’ she said, grinning at him flirtatiously.
He put his hand in the small of her back and pulled her towards him. ‘If the lady would allow me to show her, I think she’ll find much amusement in it.’
‘Please do, Mr McLoughlin.’
Dermot led her into the shadows. Shafts of light streamed through the thick canopy of leaves above them. Birds sang in the branches and butterflies searched for nectar among the foxgloves and elder. ‘Isn’t it beautiful,’ she said, treading softly through the bed of ferns and bracken.
Dermot took her by the waist and pushed her gently against the trunk of an oak tree. ‘It pales in beauty when compared to you,’ he said, pressing her into the soft lichen.
‘Now you’re a poet like my brother,’ she laughed, but her voice was already husky with desire at the prospect of what he was going to do to her.
He put his mouth on hers to silence her mockery. She parted her lips and closed her eyes and felt her whole body respond. His beard scratched her chin and then, as he kissed his way down her neck to her throat, it scratched her there too, giving her delicious feelings in her belly. She couldn’t imagine responding to Ronald in this way. Then, at the thought of Ronald, marriage and the dreaded marital bed, her determination to explore her sexuality with a man who aroused her grew fierce. Dermot ran his tongue over her collarbone and into the well at her throat. Then he began to unbutton her blouse, and instead of making him stop she allowed him to undress her. As he fiddled with the little pearl buttons, his breath grew hot and hoarse, and Arethusa heard her own breathing as it grew shallow and more rapid with anticipation. When her blouse was undone she gently pushed him away so that she could reach the metal hooks on the front of her corset. She could not expect him to know how to release her from that piece of armour. His dark eyes watched as one by one she unhooked them. Gradually her flesh was revealed until she dropped the corset to the forest floor with a triumphant smile, releasing her breasts for him to admire, and admire them, he did. They were full and soft and a creamy, flawless white. For a moment Dermot stared at them as if he didn’t know what to do. As if he was suddenly aware of who was standing half-naked in front of him and was duly abashed. Arethusa took his hand and placed it on her left breast with a small gasp. His hand was big and warm and rough with calluses. A labourer’s hand. No one had ever touched her there before and the feeling was exquisite. He moved it, tracing his thumb around her nipple, causing her to let out a low moan. She lifted her chin and found his lips as his other hand moved onto her right breast. The sensation was so heavenly that Arethusa could think of nothing but the mounting tension in her belly. She closed her eyes, took his hand off her breast and put it between her legs, in the place where she ached the most. Dermot did not need any further encouragement. He lifted her skirt and burrowed beneath it. He slid his hand into her drawers and reached between her thighs, which were warm and damp and parting for him eagerly. Arethusa’s moans grew louder as once again she felt his fingertips on the skin above her stocking. This time she didn’t stop him. She closed her eyes and gasped as his fingers began to caress her most secret place, causing her to lose herself entirely in the moment. Then she was on the forest floor, her back against the soft grass, her knees falling towards the grass without so much as a blush upon her cheek. He knelt at her feet and unfastened his trousers and she watched him with a steady, shameless gaze until he revealed himself with a triumphant smile. Then he was slipping it into her and she was delighting in her wantonness, as if, by letting herself go in this way she was at last giving expression to her own true nature. With every thrust her pleasure mounted until, at its height, something gave, spreading warmth and pleasure into every corner of her body.
The Secret Hours Page 12
