by Sara Seale
Clancy, for this occasion, sat at the foot of the table opposite her father, with Mark on her right hand and Conn on her left. The unaccustomed flush still rode high in her cheek-bones, and her young, unpainted mouth wore an air of expectant sweetness very touching to see. Never in all her life had she known such gracious attention, and it went to her head like wine.
“You see?” Mark said in a low voice. “It can be done.” There was gratitude and warm liking in her answering smile.
“It’s wonderful,” she said. “But will it last?”
“That depends on you. The headiness of the moment, the party spirit if you like, can’t last into everyday life, but you yourself, what you are tonight, need never fade.”
“What am I tonight? That’s what puzzles me.”
“You’re a little fey among other things, but you’re eighteen years old and you’re an adult person—a very charming adult person.”
The long lashes hid her eyes for a moment.
“You’re different, too,” she said.
He smiled.
“Not really. You just see me differently. You’re only just beginning to see me at all, in fact.”
She laughed.
“Oh, Mark, you make it all sound so easy. But it’s difficult to think of your tutor as an equal, you know.”
“Yes, I suppose it is. The same might apply to the tutor when his pupil suddenly grows up under his eyes.” Conn on the other side was telling her plaintively not to let the Lord Protector monopolize her entirely, and Mark, with a smile, turned to Aunt Bea on his right.
“Conn,” she said, a little girl again, “what’s the surprise? Clodagh wouldn’t tell us, and I’m dying to know.”
“Wait,” he said, as, the meal ended, Biddy carried in a great iced cake lit by eighteen candles and set it down in front of Clancy.
“We’ll all have to blow,” said Conn. “Clancy could never put eighteen candles out with one breath.”
“I can’t bear to blow them out at all, they look so pretty,” Clancy said.
Kevin held up his hand.
“Before you cut the cake, we’ll have the toast of the evening,” he said. “Mark, you are outside the family, and think you should be toast-master. Fill the glasses.”
Mark got to his feet, and for a moment looked in silence at the expectant faces around him, then he raised his glass and said in his clipped, English voice:
“I have much pleasure in proposing a toast to our very charming guest of honour on this, her eighteenth birthday. Ladies and gentlemen! I give you Miss Clancy O’Shane!”
Everyone cried: “Clancy!” and raised their glasses to her, and Mark sat down as Kevin said;
“You must reply, Clancy. You must always reply to a toast.”
She stood up. The circle of light from the candles on the cake threw a radiance on the white skin of her throat and shoulders, deepening the smoky eyes until they looked almost black.
“I don’t know what to say,” she said, in a voice which sounded a little shaky. “I don’t know what to say except that it’s been a wonderful birthday, and thank you all very, very much for making it so perfect. I would like to drink to my family which counts Conn, of course, and to you, Mark, because after all, I rather like the British.
She took a sip from her glass and sat down hurriedly amidst much laughter.
“Now, cut the cake,” cried Brian, impatient to get the talking over.
“Just a minute,” Clodagh said, “there’s one more toast for you to make, Mark.”
“Yes?” He looked across at her inquiringly.
She slipped her hand into Conn’s.
“It’s the surprise. You tell them, Conn.”
“Well, you see, Mark, you couldn’t know,” Conn said, “but we’d like you to propose a toast to us. We’re going to be married.”
Mark always remembered that moment. The dead silence before a babel of questions broke out. Conn and Clodagh looking round the table with pleased, expectant faces, and Clancy beside him, straight as a wand, her stricken face still and pinched in the light of her birthday candles.
Then Kevin gave a great roar of laughter.
“I’d give anything to see Kate’s face when you tell her,” he shouted. “And she with the grand ideas for her only daughter! Clodagh, you little minx, how long have you had this up your sleeve?”
“Oh, a long time,” she said excitedly. “All the summer, I think, only I couldn’t make up my mind. That’s why we quarrelled so much, I expect. It was the night you had your heart attack, Kilmallin. I was frightened, and Conn came back with my scarf, and somehow I knew then. We decided to keep it quiet till Clancy’s party and spring it on you then. Are you surprised?”
“No,” said Aunt Bea unexpectedly. “I think I knew, though it’s never been what I expected. Kate won’t be at all pleased.”
“She’ll get over it in time,” Clodagh said. “She likes Conn really, and now he’s selling the farm she can’t have any real objection.”
Clancy spoke for the first time.
“Selling the farm?” she said, in a dazed little voice.
Clodagh blew her a kiss.
“Darling, don’t go up in the air about it,” she said. “You know I couldn’t bury myself in Slievaun all the year round. Besides, there’s no money in it, and Mamma will expect her daughter to be supported in the manner to which she’s accustomed—or as near it as possible, that is.”
“But what will you do, Conn?” Clancy asked, bewildered.
“He’s coming into Daddy’s office,” said Clodagh, wrinkling her nose at Conn. “I’ve got it all fixed up, only of course, Daddy doesn’t know I’m going to marry him yet. When he does, he’ll have to give him a decent wage and a partnership later on, I expect.”
“Conn in a city office! Oh, no!” whispered Clancy. It was, for her, the final betrayal.
“Well,” said Kevin, hugely enjoying the prospect of his married sister’s discomfiture, “I’ll say this for you, pussycat. You know what you want and you go after it. You should have been an O’Shane.”
“I am an O’Shane on my mother’s side,” said Clodagh demurely, and Kevin laughed.
“So you are, good luck to you both. Now, Mark, let’s have that toast.”
Mark rose to his feet once again. He never before had had to perform a small action that was so distasteful to him. He did not look at Clancy, but raised his glass and looked unsmilingly across the table.
“Your health and happiness, both of you,” he said briefly, and sat down.
Clodagh made a face.
“You didn’t sound as if you meant it very much,” she pouted.
It was Brian who brought the party down in ruins, He banged his dessert knife on the table and shouted suddenly: “Of course he didn’t mean it! How could anyone mean it? Conn has been Clancy’s friend ever since they were little. He belongs to Clancy. Clodagh, you’re beastly, beastly! How could you take him away?”
“Brian, be quiet,” said Mark sharply, but there was no stopping him.
“I won’t be quiet!” he cried, in the shrill tones of overwrought excitement. “How can Conn sell the farm and live in filthy Dublin? I hate you both. You’ve spoilt Clancy’s party and now I don’t want any cake.” He began to cry.
“Brian!” thundered Kevin.
“I’ll take him up to Agnes,” Mark said.
“No, I’ll take him,” said Aunt Bea. “You’d better stay here.”
Brian was led, sobbing, from the room, and Kevin said crossly:
“Well, after that disgraceful exhibition you’d better get on with cutting the cake and have done with it.”
Mark turned to look at Clancy. She was sitting there, still not moving, but, since Brian’s outburst, the misery was there in her face for all to see. For a moment he became the tutor again.
“Pay attention, Clancy,” he said sharply, “everyone’s waiting.”
She picked up a knife obediently, and Conn and Clodagh leant forward and laughing
ly blew out the candles. With the sudden quenching of the light, the colour seemed to fade from Clancy’s face, leaving her very white.
“Come, I’ll help you,” said Mark, and standing behind her chair, he placed a firm hand over hers and guided the knife.
“That’s what you’ll be doing for me very soon, Conn darling,” Clodagh giggled, “only it won’t be a birthday cake. Doesn’t Mark look stem? I should like to think it was unrequited passion, but he never cared a button for me.”
“Serve you right, too, the way you used to make sheep’s eyes at him to get me jealous,” retorted Conn, giving her hair a tweak.
Presently they went back to the library to play rummy. Kevin said good night to everyone and retired to his study. Clancy went up to the schoolroom to fetch the cards, and while Conn talked to Aunt Bea by the fire, Mark and Clodagh put the card-table up.
“You aren’t very pleased with me, are you?” Clodagh said.
He clicked a table leg into position.
“Not very.”
“But I can’t help it if Conn and I fall in love, can I?” she said.
He glanced at her unsmilingly.
“No, but you needn’t have chosen tonight to break the news. It wasn’t kind to spoil Clancy’s party.”
“I never thought it would spoil it,” she protested. “How was I to know that Brian would go off at half-cock like that?”
“It wasn’t Brian who spoilt things. But it never really was Clancy’s party, was it?”
“How do you mean? Of course it was Clancy’s party, and I took endless trouble over everything.”
Mark smiled a little grimly.
“You took endless trouble, my dear, because you meant it to be your party,” he said. “The birthday was just a buildup to the real surprise of the evening, wasn’t it?”
She rustled her skirts angrily.
“I don’t know why you’re always so hateful to me—and on my engagement night, too.”
“I’m sorry if you find me hateful,” he said impassively. “I don’t really care how you behave, Clodagh, as long as you don’t upset my charges. Here’s Clancy with the cards. What are we going to play? Rummy?”
They played rummy and slippery Anne, and a form of nap which Conn had invented, finishing up with animal grab, and making a lot of noise.
At half-past eleven Aunt Bea said with unusual firmness that Conn must go and the girls must get to bed, as Clancy was looking tired. She did look very tired, Mark thought. She had joined in every game. Clodagh went out into the hall with Conn to see him off, and Mark said he would put the cards away and lock up.
“Good night,” Clancy said to Mark, and followed her aunt upstairs.
Mark folded up the card-table and bolted the french window, seeing as he did so the tail lights of Conn’s car disappearing down the drive. A moment later, Clodagh put her head round the door.
“Don’t lock the garden door,” she said, “Clancy’s out.” He looked round sharply.
“Clancy? She went up to bed five minutes ago.”
“Well, she must have come down again. I saw her slip out of the garden door just as I was coming in. The crazy idiot hadn’t got a coat on, either. Well, good night.”
He watched the light of her hurricane lamp go bobbing up the stairs, then he snatched the nearest coat from the big bogwood press in the hall, and went out on to the terrace.
The night was fine but bitterly cold, and clouds were scudding over the moon, promising rain on the morrow. He called softly but got no answer, and then he saw her, standing on the end of the jetty, her dress pale and ghostly in the fitful moonlight.
For an instant his heart contracted with fear, and he ran with long strides over the damp grass, but when he reached her he saw that her hands covered her face, and her whole body was racked with sobs. The sound of her weeping was the most desolate thing he had ever heard.
“Clancy, come in, my child, you’ll catch cold,” he said.
“Go away, go away,” she sobbed wildly. “I don’t want anyone to see me.”
He put the coat over her shoulders and turned her gently round into his arms.
“Surely you don’t mind me,” he said. “I’m just the English tutor. Cromwell’s the name—remember?”
She clung to him in a storm of tears, and he felt a great compassion go out to her, and perhaps something more besides. He held her closely without speaking, until she was quieter, and watched a light come on in Slievaun across the loch.
“Come into the house now, my dear,” he said then, leading her away from the water. “We’ll both catch our deaths out here.”
The house was very quiet, and the downstair rooms had that air of desertion which falls upon them when everyone has gone to bed, and fires have sunk to ash and pale embers. Mark took Clancy into the library and threw some wood on to the dying turfs.
“Come to the fire,” he said. “You must be frozen. You’ve torn your lovely new frock—what a pity!”
“I never want to wear it again,” she said, and started to shiver.
He took her cold hands in his and led her to the fire. Automatically she kicked off her shoes, and they lay there on the floor, muddy and forlorn, the silver already tarnishing. The fresh wood burst into a sudden blaze, and she sat down on the rug and held her hands to the warmth. He stooped over the fire beside her, warming his own cold fingers while he gave her time to recover, but the long evening of strain and keeping up appearances had been too much for her. She could not stop crying.
He pulled up a chair, and sat down.
“We’ll talk this all out,” he said, “then we’ll forget it. Things hurt damnably when you’re growing up, Clancy, but the hurt doesn’t last. Try to believe me even if you think it’s nonsense.”
“I don’t understand it,” she said, lifting her drowned, smoky eyes to his face. “Conn and Clodagh—they were always quarrelling. Often she didn’t even seem to like him very much.”
“Sometimes it happens like that,” he told her. “People often fight against the very thing they want. You only quarrel with someone who means something to you.”
“He belonged to me,” she said passionately. “Conn always belonged to me. You heard Brian say so.”
“No one belongs to one person, Clancy,” he said gently. “You must belong to each other or it just doesn’t work.”
“I thought we did,” she said. “I always thought we did.”
He regarded her gravely.
“Did you think you were in love with Conn?”
She looked confused.
“I don’t know. I never thought about being in love, I just loved him—I always have. He was my special friend.”
He smiled.
“But one can have a special friend without the complications of being in love, you know. Had you thought about it seriously? I mean, did you hope some day to marry him?”
“I don’t know,” she said again. “I knew I would probably have to get married some time—Kilmallin and Aunt Bea used to say there was nothing else for me to do. And I suppose I thought it might be Conn—I think Aunt Bea did, too. You see, I wouldn’t have minded marrying Conn. It would have seemed so—so natural.”
He gave her his handkerchief.
“Here, take this. You’ll be getting quite a collection soon, won’t you? Listen to me, now, Clancy. I don’t think you were in love with Conn. I think the fact that you’ve never met any other men has given him a false importance for you, that, and the fact that you were lonely. Conn is very fond of you, but it was a relationship you took too seriously. If he’d been a little more experienced himself he would have realized what he was doing, but I should think he knows as little of women as you do of men. I’ve wanted to speak of this to you before, you know, for I was afraid you were going to get hurt.”
Her tears had ceased, and she sat at his feet, screwing his handkerchief into a ball, listening to him with a puckered forehead.
“Did you know about Conn and Clodagh, then?” she asked.
“I suspected, latterly,” he admitted. “At least, I suspected that he was interested in her. I wasn’t so sure about your cousin. I thought she might just have been bored and unable to resist trying to upset any man.”
“You don’t like Clodagh very much, do you?”
“Oh, I like her well enough. There’s no real harm in Clodagh, but I felt she was old enough to know what she was doing, and you were not.”
She sighed.
“I suppose it was very stupid of me not to know, too. Clodagh is so gay and pretty. Dozens of young men are in love with her.”
“According to Clodagh.”
“Oh, but it’s true. Aunt Kate would tell you—she always wanted Clodagh to make up her mind and settle down. But I never thought that Conn would be her kind.”
“Clodagh,” said Mark a little dryly, “is a very definite young woman. She will make him her kind.”
The distress came back to her eyes.
“But don’t you see, Mark, that’s the worst thing of all,” she said. “For Conn to sell the farm is bad enough, but to give it all up for the city—for an office job in a city—it’s— it’s a sort of betrayal of everything he’s ever believed in.”
He looked at her with gentleness.
“I’m afraid you’re an idealist, Clancy,” he told her. “People have to lead their own lives, you know. Whether or not it turns out to be a betrayal of themselves remains to be seen. That’s hurt you more than losing Conn, hasn’t it?”
“That’s how I’ve lost him,” she said with simplicity. “Loving Clodagh—well, that can’t make me love him less, but living her life, instead of making her live his—that’s somehow wrong. I can’t explain.”
“I think I know what you mean, all the same, and perhaps you’re right, but there’s nothing you can do about it. People have to find these things out for themselves.”
Somewhere in the house a clock struck the half-hour and Mark glanced at his watch.
“Half-past twelve,” he said. “Time you were in bed after such an evening.”
