by Jane Arbor
They could not go far, as the children were expected, but they followed the back lane past the farmyard as it twisted between high briar hedges towards the open country. The day’s promise of fair weather had not held, and the clouds rolling in over the Wicklows were bringing rain again as they turned for home. But, lifting their faces to its softness, they agreed that this rain was not like London rain at all. It even seemed to have a sweet elusive scent.
Bridget was rather dreading the first meeting with the children. It was so important she should gain their confidence from the start! Jenny thought Masterman might help to break the ice for them. But Masterman, who was still a shy and suspicious cat, would not, Bridget felt, give the best of impressions of a home in which he had as yet no faith of his own.
Both girls went out to meet the car when it arrived.
‘Here we are. Hop out.’ The driver alighted and came forward to introduce himself as Gordon Trent.
He was a man of about thirty-five, with a florid complexion and a small moustache. His tweeds, his brogues, his country cap were exactly right for the setting. Bridget had the fleeting impression that clothes were important to him. When she told him she was Bridget Haire he said in easy compliment, ‘You are Miss Haire? Heavens—lucky Pegeen and Minna!’
Bridget introduced Jenny and went to greet the children. Minna, the little one, who had been excitedly bouncing on the back seat, was still bouncing and skipping as she twined trustful fingers about Bridget’s. Pegeen, the eight-year-old, shook hands with grave politeness, then remained standing by the car. ‘We’ve got some luggage,’ she said. ‘Mummy told us—’
‘All right, all right. I’ll see to your stuff before you need it.’ Gordon Trent had been saying something to Jenny which had brought the colour to her cheeks. But he turned to raise a resigned eyebrow at Bridget. ‘There’s a refrain I’m learning by heart—“Mummy told us!” That child is an old woman already. She hasn’t anything like the spirit of the other one.’
Bridget held out her free hand to Pegeen. ‘Come and help me to make tea, will you? I’ve been wondering—do you like tea, or would you rather have milk?’
Pegeen came, but she walked independently, her head in its round sailor hat held very high. In a clear, superior voice she said, ‘We like cocoa best. But Mummy said we weren’t to bother you if you hadn’t got any.’
While Jenny took the children to their room and to wash, Bridget went to the kitchen, and when Gordon Trent brought in the bags he joined her there.
He leaned against the table with folded arms, watching her as she moved about. He said at last, ‘And I expected the school matron type! With your looks, what on earth made you bury yourself in a benighted place like Tullabor? Hang it, there are heaps of things open to girls like you and—Jenny, is it? She’s another beauty—always supposing one’s taste runs to blondes—’ He allowed to hang in the air the implication that his own did not before adding, ‘What did bring you here—Bridget?’
She ignored his use of her Christian name but thought it unfair not to explain their circumstances to him. She added, ‘You won’t have “buried” yourself, because Cion Eigel must create a whole social life of its own.’
‘Don’t you believe it! Mrs. Steven is practically an invalid, as you must know. There’s a daughter whom, I gather, it isn’t terribly good form to mention—ran away from home or something. There are the staff—a stuffy lot where they aren’t too, too Irish—a couple of matrons, and for the rest, far too much of Boy.’
‘I can’t think,’ said Bridget with spirit, ‘what made you take the job if you don’t like boys!’
‘Oh, I don’t have to pretend to love them enough to be pining to hammer knowledge into their heads.’ His tone was indifferent. ‘My job is a bit more on the administrative side, thank goodness. And nothing about the whole set-up has looked quite so dreary since it brought me over here to meet you,’ he added meaningly.
Later that evening when she had put the children to bed, Bridget came down to find Jenny in the garden, making plans for flower-beds to replace far too many blackcurrant bushes and too much coarse rhubarb.
Jenny asked, ‘What do you think of the children? Minna’s sweet, isn’t she?’
‘Yes, a darling,’ agreed Bridget. ‘Pegeen—’ she stopped with a little sigh. ‘Mr. Steven was right. She is going to be more difficult.’
‘Those frozen good manners of hers—I know,’ nodded Jenny. ‘She seems years older than eight, doesn’t she?’
‘I suspect she is only eight—underneath,’ mused Bridget. ‘Did you notice at tea, when Minna told us about their cat having to be sent to their aunt’s when their home broke up? Minna was quite resigned to the necessity. But Pegeen was staring at her plate and her eyes were full of tears.’
‘Were they? I thought she seemed entirely self-possessed. Bridgie, what do you think of Mr. Trent?’
‘I thought he was a bit—what’s the word?—brash.’
‘Oh, did you?’ Jenny sounded disappointed. ‘I rather liked him. By the way, I said he could come over whenever he liked. I hope you don’t mind?’
‘I have a feeling,’ said Bridget drily, ‘that he would have come in any case.’ Her mind was not fully on Gordon Trent at all. She was worrying about Pegeen. For her age the child’s reserve was not a bit natural.
When they went to bed themselves she went to listen at the children’s door, next to her own. But all was quiet, and it was not until nearly an hour later she heard the sound which made her leap out of bed and reach for her dressing-gown in a single movement.
In the next room she found, as she had expected, that Minna was sound asleep. It was Pegeen, the self-possessed, whose pathetic armour of defence had broken down in a lonely despair which no child should have to know.
‘Pegeen dear, what is it...?’ Wrung with pity, Bridget sat on the edge of the bed and gathered her into her arms, waiting for the shuddering sobs to stop.
At last Pegeen said in a defiant choked whisper, ‘I’m not crying for Mummy or Daddy or the boys. Because Mummy said I’d got to be brave about them. But oh, it’s Battle! He didn’t want to go to Auntie’s in Belfast. Why did he have to? I want him so much!’
‘Tell me about him. Is he a big cat like Masterman?’
‘He’s—’ Pegeen managed a few choked sentences, but her eyes were still brimming and her mouth tremulous when Bridget gently pressed her back on her pillow and covered her over. She said, ‘Let’s write a letter to Auntie asking all about Battle to-morrow, shall we? For now, I want you to try not to cry any more. You might wake Minna, and then she’d want some of the cocoa that I’m going to make now—secretly, just for you and me.’
Wide-eyed, Pegeen watched her as she slipped from the room. She ran down to the kitchen and opened the door, only to be met with a whimper from Masterman who was prowling forlornly about. She knelt to gentle him, murmuring, ‘Oh, Masterman—not you too?’ and did not hear Dion Christie enter until she was aware that he was standing over her. He said, ‘I was still working, and I heard you come down. Is anything wrong?’
She made to stand up but stumbled over her dressing-gown and he had to put out a hand to steady her. His momentary grip upon her wrist was hard and impersonal. She said, ‘I came to make cocoa for Pegeen. She’s desperately homesick. And I’m afraid Masterman is the same.’
‘The poor gossoons!’ His voice was so compassionate that she glanced at him in surprised gratitude. But he had stooped to pick up the cat and was stroking him. ‘Why don’t you take Masterman to Pegeen?’ he asked. ‘Two heartsick people should be able to comfort each other. Go on and make your cocoa, and I’ll carry him up for you when you’re ready.’
‘Would you? I think she would like to have him to pet for a little while. I believe she’s making her longing for her own cat a kind of symbol for all the rest of the desolation she is feeling. Homesickness is a dreadful thing, isn’t it?’
‘Sickness is too mild a word for it. While it lasts it’s like lov
e—a desperate hunger of the heart.’
Bridget thought, When people compare anything to love they are usually being cynical. But nothing in his tone had betrayed cynicism. She asked gently, ‘Have you known—homesickness then?’
‘I have. Not narrowly for a home, which I haven’t had since I was a baby, but always for Ireland when I’ve been away from it. How’s that cocoa going? Is it nearly ready?’
She nodded.
In this mood, she thought, I could almost like him ...
The surprising admission persisted as they went up the stairs together.
CHAPTER THREE
The next day Kate Mann was to come out from Dublin by the same train which had brought Bridget on her first visit. Dion offered to fetch her from Ardvar.
‘Well, we’ll keep lunch back of course,’ said Bridget. ‘But it will be rather late, I’m afraid.’
‘What of it?’ he retorted. ‘Meal-times aren’t divinely appointed, as the English seem to think. This way or that, what does half an hour or so matter?’ He crossed to the window where Jenny, helped by Pegeen and somewhat hindered by Minna was uprooting the first of the old currant bushes.
‘Isn’t that work too heavy for her?’ he asked.
Bridget went to stand beside him. ‘I don’t think it can hurt her,’ she said. ‘She knows her warning signs of tiredness by now and she won’t overdo it. She’s so keen to get the garden cleared.’
‘How keen is Pegeen this morning?’
Bridget pulled a little face. ‘Very formal again, though we’ve composed a letter of enquiry about her cat. I thought last night might have broken the ice between us—’
‘Between whom?’
‘Between Pegeen and me, of course. Who else?’ Bridget, checked, had forgotten what she meant to say. But after a moment she added, ‘I don’t know whether she doesn’t remember much about last night or whether it is that she doesn’t want me to remember it. It could be that she feels she has “lost face,” as proud or reserved people do when they betray feelings they usually contrive to hide.’
Dion looked down at her. ‘You’re a remarkable woman if you can recognise that a “Keep Out” sign means what it says,’ he commented drily. ‘As for losing face, don’t tell me you’ve ever had to regret crying on a handy shoulder!’
‘Usually,’ retorted Bridget crisply, beginning to prepare a tray for the children’s mid-morning milk, ‘when one feels like crying there isn’t a proffered shoulder on which to do it!’
‘Well, I daresay you’ve never appeared to need one...’
It was not yet time for him to go over to Ardvar, and when Bridget later looked out from Kate’s room where she was putting some finishing touches she could see the four of them grouped about the wheelbarrow, Jenny and Dion each sitting on a shaft, Pegeen leaning on Jenny, Minna between Dion’s knees. They were laughing and talking and Bridget thought fleetingly, I seem to be the only one he rubs up the wrong way ... But as she watched the party broke up and Minna came running into the house, calling to her.
‘Mr. Dion says, Let’s all go in his car to meet Mrs. Kate. Can we, please?’
‘Why yes, I suppose so,’ said Bridget. ‘If, that is, there’s room for the four of you as well as Mrs. Mann and her luggage.’
‘No, he meant all of us. You too,’ claimed Minna.
‘Oh, I can’t possibly come. There’s the lunch. Besides, five would be an absurd crowd...’ Going down the stairs to Minna, she met Dion and the others at their foot.
‘There’s room enough,’ he urged. ‘You and Jenny and all the children all sitting bodkin on the back seat, once we’ve collected Kate. And as for lunch, what’s wrong with bread and cheese when we get back?’
Bridget shook her head. ‘I can’t possibly offer Kate bread and cheese after her journey. And the lunch is started. I can’t dash off on the spur of the moment and leave it to spoil...’
Dion did not urge her again. Instead he murmured cryptically, ‘It’s practically automatic. Press a button and you get the reaction you’d expect. Duty. Punctuality. All the rules in black-and-white ... Impulse? Spur-of-the-moment? Dear me, no! But what a lot in life you must miss!’ Then he shepherded the others out, leaving her alone.
In the kitchen the boiling fowl was gently simmering in its pot; the potatoes would continue to steam towards fluffiness; the rhubarb tart with its bowl of thick, fresh cream stood ready in the larder, and the table could quickly have been laid on their return. If she had agreed to go to Ardvar, nothing would have spoiled. So she could regret at leisure that quirk of contrariness which had expected to be coaxed, and had felt rebuffed when it hadn’t been!
If I’m not careful, she thought as she collected glass and silver with fierce concentration, that man is going to turn me into a positive hedgehog of outraged feelings. What’s more, I suspect he would enjoy doing it and watching me bristle. Well, I must just refuse to bristle, that’s all ...
She wished it sounded an easy resolution to keep.
Contrary to Bridget’s fears that Kate Mann might not approve of the modern changes in the house, Kate liked them all. She was particularly taken with the electric cooker and stood for a long time before it.
When she prowled off on a further tour of inspection Dion said to Bridget and Jenny, ‘That cooker is going to play its part in Kate’s age-long rivalry with Miss O’Hanlon over the way. I can see it in her eye. When Sarah O’Hanlon brings out her hoary story of having once sung a solo in a choir on Radio Eireann or mentions that she’s able to sit on her hair, you watch Kate throw the cooker in her face, so to speak!’
‘Are they really at loggerheads? Doesn’t Kate shop at the O’Hanlons?’ asked Bridget, foreseeing the domestic complications of never being able to ask Kate to step across the road in an emergency.
‘Shop there? Where else—when the two sides of the counter are their chief battleground? If it wasn’t early closing day, Kate would be hopping to be over there already. As she may be yet, if she can’t contain her pride in the cooker till to-morrow.’
After lunch Dion disappeared, Jenny and the children went back to their gardening, and over an early cup of tea Bridget discussed with Kate the arrangements she suggested for sharing their work.
Bridget said tentatively, ‘There are more of us in the house now, of course. You must say if you find any of the work too much for you.’
Kate shook her head. ‘Let you not worry about that, my dear. It will be different, but I’ll have help now, and weren’t the two of them—Mr. William and Mr. Dion both—often the full of any one woman’s hands?’
‘Was my uncle difficult, then?’ asked Bridget.
‘Difficult enough. All his life he’d no attention that he hadn’t been asked to pay for, and that made him expect value for his money. He’d never, d’you see, known the woman that would serve him for love. In the latter end, when he sometimes had a sadness upon him that he didn’t even let Mr. Dion see, he’d say to me that he’d missed all that and that he hoped Mr. Dion wouldn’t take the same way.’
‘The same way?’ queried Bridget. She was reluctant to discuss Dion in his absence, but she wanted to probe Kate’s memories of the uncle whom now, too late, she wished she had met, and it seemed that in Kate’s mind the two men were linked through their unusual friendship.
‘His way, Mr. William meant. He’d turned his back on tenderness until it was too late, and he’d say of Mr. Dion that he believed he cared only for the things that were furred or feathered or that would show up under a microscope. But Mr. William hadn’t got the whole of it there, as I knew. Mr. Dion might have no eye for the colleen that would make him a good wife, but he’d always care for any hapless thing that would be needing his pity or his strength. And there was a time—’ Kate broke off. Her gnarled hands smoothed rhythmically at her skirt while her unfocused eyes looked into some past which Bridget did not share. Then suddenly she brightened and stood up. ‘Well, Miss Bridget,’ she said, ‘if you wouldn’t be wanting any more of me this mi
nute, it was in my mind that I’d be stepping over to the O’Hanlon’s side door. Sometimes Sarah does be looking for a bit of company on closing days, and it could be that she hasn’t heard I’m back...’
‘Yes, do go, Mrs. Kate,’ urged Bridget with a smile, remembering what Dion had said and hoping that the electric cooker would serve Kate’s cause well.
She was touched by the simple sincerity of the old lady’s summing-up of her uncle’s personal tragedy, and she realised that Kate had laid a sure finger upon a trait of Dion’s which evidently she found lovable.
It was true of him that the helpless or the weak seemed to appeal to him, Bridget allowed reluctantly. Jenny’s fragility, little homesick Pegeen, even the forlorn Masterman had all been able to command his ready compassion. They had touched a chord in him which did not vibrate for her, because she was no ‘hapless thing’ and did not see him as a pillar to be leaned on in a crisis.
At the point where she decided she did not want to analyse their relationship any further, Bridget went to look for the others in the garden. But they had disappeared, leaving their tools about, and supposing they might have gone for a walk, she went out herself in the hope of meeting them on the way back.
She took the way she and Jenny had gone by yesterday. Jenny had wanted to explore a copse on the shoulder of a slope to the right of the road, but they had not had time to reach it, and Bridget thought she might have taken the children there to-day.
Again the bright day had clouded over, and as Bridget sensed the new threat of rain upon the wind she hoped that if Jenny had brought the children so far, at least they had brought their coats. She had set out impulsively herself and was hatless and in a jersey suit. Over the shoulder of the hill rain bars were fanning out from the underside of the approaching clouds, and while she was still out in the open the rain began to lash cruelly about her.
Bridget ran, thankful to plunge into the shelter of the copse when she reached it. Underfoot, dried bracken and broken twigs crackled noisily as she pushed aside the scrawny brambles to reach the shelter of a beech tree which, though it was not yet in full leaf, offered its spread branches as the best shelter in sight.
