The House (Armstrong House Series Book 1)

by A. O'Connor

  “I often look up at those portraits of Pierce’s ancestors looking down at me, judging me for what we’re doing.”

  “Can you judge happiness?”

  “Many do.”

  “Then let them.”

  “We don’t have a right to be this happy when so many people are suffering on the front . . . It will be 1918 next week. Will this war ever end?”

  “I don’t want to think about that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Pierce will be coming home,” he said.

  He leaned across and took a wrapped present from under the Christmas tree.

  “Open this now,” he said.

  She unwrapped the prettily wrapped parcel and found a little box. She opened it and saw a glittering brooch inside, an elaborate cluster of rhinestones.

  “It’s only costume jewellery, but I had it especially made for you by the costume department in the Gaiety theatre,” he said, pinning it to her dress.

  “I love it,” she said as she held it tightly.

  Clara stood at the open window of the bedroom. Johnny was still asleep. Snow had piled up high on the window ledge and the whole countryside was covered in it as far as she could see. It had begun to snow heavily again and it blew into the room, melting as soon as it touched the warm floorboards inside. She imagined there would be snow in France where Pierce was as well. And as she looked at the sleeping form of Johnny, she wondered how it had all come to this.

  The next few days passed quickly in their own little world. The heavy snow stayed and they wrapped up and went walking for miles along the lakeshore and through the countryside.

  Johnny stepped back from the painting and said nothing for a while before looking over at Clara and declaring, “It’s finished.”

  She came over and stood beside him as she looked at the canvas.

  The painting was brilliant with colour, and was a close-up image of her sitting staring dreamily towards the viewer, her facial expression an unusual combination of hope and disappointment.

  “Johnny – that’s not me. You’ve let your feelings for me get in the way of your work. I don’t look that good.”

  He put his arms around her. “It doesn’t even do you justice.”

  78

  It was the spring and Prudence came marching through the front door carrying a stack of papers.

  “Hello! Clara?” she shouted out. There was no response and she marched through the hall. “Fennell?”

  She walked to the back of the main stairs and through the door that led down to the servants’ work quarters. She walked in to see Fennell sitting reading the newspaper at the fire and Mrs Fennell having a cup of tea.

  “Well, I see this place has gone to pot since I left,” said Prudence as Fennell stood up quickly and put down the newspaper.

  “Where’s Clara?” demanded Prudence.

  “Em – she has gone to the town to get some new paintbrushes with Mr Seymour.”

  Prudence raised her eyes to heaven. “Have they still not finished that damned painting? The Mona Lisa took half the time, I’m sure.”

  “Mr Seymour seems to be a great perfectionist,” said Fennell.

  “My arse!” She sighed loudly. “When her ladyship gets back, tell her I need this paperwork signed by her urgently for the running of the farm. I’ll leave it on the desk in the library.”

  She gave them both a condescending look and turned and walked out. She was about to go into the library when she paused in thought and then crossed over to the doors leading into the ballroom. She went in and saw the large stand holding the canvas covered by a sheet. She walked over to it and pulled off the sheet and stared at the finished painting.

  79

  It was a Saturday night in April and a gang of Johnny’s friends were down staying at the house. There was a great buzz because an American friend of his who was a Hollywood director called Paul Tierney was over from the States visiting and was staying as well. He had brought his latest movie with him and a screen and projector to show it.

  “I’m just fascinated by all this movie stuff,” Clara said as Fennell put out the chairs in the ballroom for the guests to sit and Johnny and Paul Tierney set up the screen and the projector. “I loved the theatre, but this is even more exciting.” Everyone took their seats.

  “I’m going to show you a show reel from the war front first,” Paul informed them as the lights were turned off and the moving pictures began to flicker on the screen.

  Clara sat at the front with Johnny and watched, fascinated at the black-and-white images of the soldiers in the front.

  “Oh, Johnny, look at them. I could only imagine what it might be like from reading my friends’ letters, but here it’s like we’re with them.”

  Johnny looked at Clara’s sad face. “Come on, Paul, enough of all that! We want to be cheered up not fed up! Put on your movie!”

  “You guys got no patience,” said Paul as he changed the film reel and his latest movie came to life on the screen.

  Clara held Johnny’s arm tightly as they laughed at the comedy.

  “That’s the first movie I’ve ever seen,” said Clara as it came to an end. “I loved it!”

  Everyone stood up and Clara took Paul’s arm as they made their way to the drawing room.

  “Now you can show us how to make all those new cocktails from New York you promised us,” said Clara.

  “I can’t promise you they will be perfect, but I can promise you a bad head in the morning,” said Paul.

  “Excellent. Fennell, bring in the new cocktail shaker Mr Tierney brought us.”

  “Oh, I think this is my favourite!” said Clara as she drank a Manhattan.

  Johnny had put music on the gramophone and it was playing loudly in the drawing room as couples danced. Suddenly the door opened and Paul Tierney came in holding a film camera.

  “Everyone just keep on going as normal! I’m making a movie of you all that I can take back to New York with me.”

  He moved through the room filming the dancing but when he approached Clara she protested.

  “Oh, don’t film me!” she begged, putting a hand up to the camera.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want it!” she squealed.

  “Come on! The camera loves you! You could be my next discovery,” he said.

  “Oh shut up!” she said. She walked away from the camera but he continued to follow her, filming her. She turned around and stuck her tongue out at the camera and then started to strike funny poses while everyone laughed.

  Johnny came over to her and they started dancing in an exaggerated fashion, swooping around the room as Paul continued to film them.

  Finally Clara collapsed on the floor laughing hysterically as the camera continued to roll.

  “Oh stop!” she gasped. “You’re not to show that film to anybody!”

  She stood up, still giggling.

  Then she turned and saw Pierce standing in the doorway.

  “Pierce!” she said loudly.

  Johnny turned off the gramophone and the crowd quietened down as everyone stared at Pierce in his officer’s uniform.

  “Please – don’t let me be the cause of stopping the party,” said Pierce.

  “Who’s this guy?” Paul drawled as he turned off the camera.

  “This – guy – happens to own this house,” said Pierce.

  Clara walked slowly over to him. “You never said you were coming back on leave,” she said, hardly believing he was there.

  “Well, I was never much of a letter-writer, as you know,” Pierce said as he observed the glamorous crowd.

  Johnny stared in silence.

  Fennell walked into the room with a silver tray of cocktail glasses.

  “Lord Armstrong!” he shouted in shock as he dropped the tray to the ground, shattering all the glasses.

  Pierce looked down at the broken glass. “I seem to be creating a bit of a stir.”

  Clara quickly spoke to everybody. “I’m sor
ry, if you could maybe go to your rooms, those of you staying here – and, those who aren’t, if I could ask you to go home?”

  Clara turned and looked frantically at Johnny who nodded. The crowd left the room, Johnny with them.

  “Leave that, Fennell,” ordered Pierce as Fennell began to sweep up the smashed glass anxiously.

  “Very good, sir,” said Fennell as he backed out of the room and closed the door.

  Clara sat down on the couch and put her hand to her head. “You’ve given me a terrible shock.”

  “So it would seem.”

  Pierce crossed over to a table and picked up one of the cocktail glasses and took a drink. “Can’t say I really like that,” he said, putting down the glass and making a face. He looked at her. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Aren’t you glad to see your returning husband?”

  “I haven’t seen you in a year and a half and then you just arrive without warning . . . how do you expect me to react?”

  “One thing I learned from war was the element of surprise.”

  “I thought we had a marriage not a war.”

  “Well, by the looks of tonight you haven’t exactly been sitting at home pining for me.”

  “How long can you stay?”

  “I’m back for good. The war on the continent should be wrapped up soon enough now the Americans are there. I’ve been given an important government role here in Ireland and I’m more needed here with the present state of affairs.” He looked around at all the cocktail glasses. “In every sense.”

  80

  Clara stood at the front door the next morning, saying goodbye to her guests.

  “Thank you for coming,” Clara said to Paul Tierney.

  “A little gift for you, the film I shot of you last night.” He handed her the film reel.

  She smiled uncomfortably at him, desperate for all the guests to be quickly gone.

  Johnny whispered to her as he stopped at the door. “What’s happening?”

  “Please just go.”

  “But what about us?” he demanded.

  “Just go! I’ll be in contact soon,” she whispered.

  He nodded and left and she closed the door and leaned against it.

  Pierce walked down the stairs. “I hope you didn’t get rid of them on my account? They looked like a spirited bunch.”

  “They were going anyway,” she said.

  He nodded and went into the dining room for breakfast.

  Pierce came out of the bathroom, buttoning his shirt, as Clara sat at the dressing table combing her hair.

  “You’ve lost weight,” he said.

  “Have I?”

  “Yes, it suits you.”

  “Thank you.” She continued to comb her hair.

  “I suppose we’d better invest in a new wardrobe of clothes for you. There’s a lot of new fashions I saw in London. It’s all gone very modern.”

  She wondered how long he had been in London, and what he had been doing there.

  “Why the sudden interest in my wardrobe?”

  “Well, with my new government post, we’ll be meeting a lot of dignitaries, military men. Have to put the best foot forward.”

  “What exactly is this new role of yours?”

  “A government advisory role for the military here in Ireland. Quite senior.”

  “I don’t think the British will be here long enough for you to be advising them on anything,” she said.

  He sat down on the bed and looked over at her. “A political view picked up from your new friends through Johnny Seymour, I suppose? I think you can say goodbye to that lot now I’m back. I don’t think they are suitable company for you.”

  She turned around and looked at him. “They are very nice people, mostly actresses, writers and political thinkers.”

  “You see actresses, writers and political thinkers. I see prostitutes, degenerates and anarchists.”

  “That’s unkind and untrue.”

  “They’re not our type and bid them farewell, please. Oh, Johnny Seymour is harmless enough I suppose, a bit of a fool, let’s face it. And if he wants to keep such company that’s his choice. But not ours.”

  She turned around and started to brush her hair again, looking in the mirror.

  “Besides, I think it’s time you had a baby.”

  Her forehead creased. “A baby?”

  “You’re thirty next year. What are we waiting for?”

  “A marriage, perhaps?”

  “It’s been hard on young married couples, the war coming when it did, forcing separation. We only had had three months together before I had to go to war.” He stood up and walked slowly over to her and put his hands on her shoulders. “But we need to get on with life now.”

  “I thought you made it clear you never loved me.”

  “You don’t need to be in love to procreate.”

  81

  Clara answered the ringing phone in the hall.

  “It’s me,” said Johnny. “We need to talk.”

  She quickly glanced around to see if there was anybody about. “Yes. Where?”

  “Cassidy’s bar. Tomorrow at three.”

  She put down the phone and quickly made her way to the drawing room.

  Clara was sitting in the back of Cassidy’s bar at a small table in a private alcove when Johnny came in and sat down. They looked at each other and smiled.

  “Well – that was a turn-up for the books,” he said eventually.

  “For one awful moment I thought you were going to tell Pierce about us.”

  “Come on,” he smirked. “I may be spontaneous but I know my social manners. It would be the height of rudeness to tell a returning war hero I had been knocking off his wife while he fought for King and country.”

  “Oh Johnny!” she chastised but couldn’t help from laughing.

  “So – where do we go from here?”

  “Well, we don’t, do we? This is where we part,” she sighed.

  He studied her for a long while.

  “We could always elope,” he said then.

  “Be serious!”

  “I am,” he spoke in a casual way. “You could divorce him.”

  “And face the scandal?”

  “It’s becoming all the rage in certain quarters, you know.”

  “Well, not mine.”

  “Your parents wouldn’t approve?”

  “They would probably forgive me anything, but I’m not putting them through it and it would destroy my grandmother . . . You see, Johnny, marrying Pierce was the biggest mistake of my life. And I’m not willing or able to take any more risks with my life. Marrying Pierce was a leap into the unknown but running away with you would be – a jump off a cliff!”

  “Thank you!”

  “You know it’s true. Besides you don’t want to be lumbered with a divorced woman – married women are more your thing. Why don’t you put me down as another notch on your bedpost and find another muse.”

  “It was never like that.”

  She reached out and held his hand.

  82

  As Pierce predicted, the war did end soon. The Germans surrendered. Armistice Day came and went at Armstrong House and Clara didn’t feel there was much to celebrate as she thought of all her lost friends. There were riots in Dublin on Armistice Day as the population’s opposition to British rule intensified. As for Pierce, he seemed to be unconcerned by the war’s end as they sat that evening in the drawing room. As usual he had spent the day in the library on the phone he had installed there for his new job.

  “Well, at least that was the war to end all wars. The world will never have to go through anything like that again,” she said.

  He started laughing. “Don’t be so bloody naïve. That war is only the start of it. It’s heralding the age of war.”

  “Don’t say that!”

  “Why not? It’s true! And the next one will be very close to home.” He put a cigar in his mouth and lit it. “Well, now it’s over, we can at least try t
o get back to normal.”

  “Whatever that is.”

  “Well, we can start the hunt season again. I’m planning a December date for the reinstatement of the Armstrong Hunt – and the Hunt Ball of course.”

  She made a sarcastic face. “Can’t wait! There will be a lot of young ladies with no one to dance with since half the young men were slaughtered.”

  “No, because I’m going to invite my new colleagues from the government and military to attend as well. It will be an opportunity for you to shine as the society hostess you were brought up to be.” His voice was heavy with sarcasm, but she realised he also meant it.