The English Tutor

by Sara Seale

  Mark, finding her there one afternoon, asked rather impatiently why she could not find something to do.

  “What is there to do?” she replied, without looking round.

  “You always used to find plenty. Why don’t you read?”

  “I’ve been reading with you all the morning.”

  “Well, then, why not go out for a walk. Rain never used to stop you. I’ll come with you, if you like.

  “All right,” she said apathetically, and uncurled a foot from under her.

  He came and sat beside her.

  “Clancy, my dear, you must try to snap out of it,” he said kindly. “All this sitting about and mooning is bad for you. Life can’t stop, you know, because Conn and Clodagh are getting married.”

  “I know,” she said, and sighed. “But it’s difficult. You see, Slievaun was the only place I had to go to.”

  He reflected that this was, in fact, true. The O’Shanes had no other neighbours who kept open house for young people.

  “Well, you can still go there,” he said. “You aren’t going to cut Conn out of your life, are you?”

  She looked at him with dismay.

  “Oh, no!” she said, “as if I could! But just now—I hate the thought of the farm going, and all the stock. I couldn’t bear to see it being deserted bit by bit.”

  “Yes, I think I can understand that,” he said. “Clancy, I’m going to speak to your father about sending you away for a bit. Your Aunt Kate, when she was here, offered to have you to stay and get you some clothes and give you a little gaiety. I think you should go.”

  “I won’t go,” she said stubbornly.

  He smiled.

  “Yes, you will. I shall speak to your father tonight.”

  She gave him a long look, remembering his kindness in moments of stress, and remembering, too, how he had paid her the compliment of his own confidence the night of her birthday, and had kissed her good night in the hall.

  “I—I don’t think I want to leave you just now,” she said, to her own surprise.

  His light eyebrows shot up, then he smiled.

  “That’s very charming of you, Clancy, and very unexpected,” he said, “but you’ll go, all the same.

  She sighed.

  “I suppose I will if you say so,” she said. “You seem to be a horribly strong-minded person when you like.”

  Kevin, when approached, was inclined to be obstructive, but was over-ruled in the end.

  “After all,” Mark pointed out, “however much you choose to forget it, Kilmallin, you have a duty to your daughter. It’s time she took an interest in her appearance, and it’s time she had a change of environment. Let her go for a fortnight. I think she needs it.”

  “Does she want to go?” asked Kevin with surprise.

  “No,” said Mark, “but that’s neither here nor there.”

  “There’s no man I know talks to me as you do,” said Kevin, exasperated. “All right, let her go, and if she comes back with fancy ideas, you’ve only yourself to blame.”

  So, on a day in December, when the soft rain pattered on the station roof, Mark saw Clancy off to Dublin. She stood there on the chilly platform, looking forlorn and a little lost, and Mark said, laughing:

  “Cheer up! Anyone would think you were going into exile instead of to Dublin for a fortnight’s holiday.”

  She did not smile.

  “I don’t think it will be much of a holiday with Aunt Kate giving orders all the time,” she said. “It will be as bad as you and your eagle eye.”

  “Have I an eagle eye?”

  “It sees much too much at times.”

  He looked down at her quizzically.

  “That might be taken several ways. Am I really such a gorgon?”

  She looked up at him. He seemed very tall, and the brim of his wet felt hat was pulled low on his forehead, throwing his eyes into shadow, but his mouth was kindly and a little inquiring.

  “No,” she said, “you’re a dear, and I shall miss you. Would you—would you write to me?”

  He looked surprised.

  “If you like. Will you answer?”

  “Yes. Yes, I will.”

  “All right. Here’s your train.”

  She leant out of the carriage window.

  “You won’t go before I come back, will you?” she asked absurdly.

  He laughed.

  “Of course not. I shall probably be here for nearly another year. You know that.”

  The guard blew his whistle, and Clancy suddenly leant from the window and gave Mark a hug.

  “Good-bye,” she said. “I’ll bring you a present from Dublin.”

  The train moved out slowly. He stood and watched it, waving as long as he could see her, then he turned and walked back along the empty platform. He realized with exasperation that he was going to miss her. He was going to miss her abominably.

  The house was full of preparations for Christmas when Clancy returned. Mary Kate made innumerable plum puddings which everyone had to stir, hams hung in the kitchen, and Michael John went out each morning to decide which was the fattest turkey. Christmas-cards littered the schoolroom table and Brian daily counted up his pocket-money and planned presents.

  Mark wondered if Conn would come this year, and, perhaps, Clodagh, and he reflected that possibly it was the thought of Christmas which had been troubling Clancy before she left.

  She had written twice from Dublin, the first letter a brief little scrawl sounding very homesick, but the second was more cheerful and full of typical accounts of her doings, which made Mark smile.

  Sitting in front of his fire in the tower room, Mark thought a good deal about her, and found himself worrying unduly about her future. What, he repeatedly told himself, could it matter to him what became of the girl after he had left Kilmallin? But he knew it did matter. One could not live so close to people and not become involved with their lives, and Clancy, the strangest and most difficult of all his many pupils, had wound herself very securely round his heart.

  Conn came over, once, to tell them the farm was sold. He would be starting work, he said, in Philip Desmond’s office early in the New Year.

  Mark regarded him a little curiously.

  “Have you really no regrets at leaving Slievaun?” he asked.

  Conn shrugged.

  “Oh, I’ll miss it, of course. I was born there and lived there all my life, but the city will be a change.”

  No, Conn had no regrets, and no deep roots. He and Clodagh were very well suited.

  Mark went to meet Clancy, feeling absurdly pleased that the fortnight was over. She jumped out of the train almost before it had stopped, and flung herself upon him shouting: “Here I am, Mark! The train’s late as usual, and a dog in my carriage was sick all the way.”

  “Well, let’s look at you,” he said, and stood surveying her with a critical eye. She looked much better, he thought, and somehow older, although that may have been due to her clothes. Aunt Kate had clearly been as good as her word. Clancy’s outfit was new and completely charming, and Tim Murphy, the elderly porter, was already carrying two new suitcases out to the car.

  “Very nice,” said Mark, “very nice indeed. Have you other snappy creations in that expensive-looking luggage?”

  She giggled.

  “Only a few things Aunt Kate made me have. They’re rather nice, really, only it was an awful bore trying things on and people sticking pins into you and Aunt Kate saying rude things about your underclothes. Oh, Mark, I am glad to be back. How is Kilmallin, and has Michael John picked his turkey yet, and the one we always send to Aunt Kate?” She danced along the platform beside him, clinging to his arm and asking innumerable questions, and he congratulated himself on his wisdom in sending her away. Not only had she got back her old spirits, but she seemed to be accepting him as a personal friend. All the way home she poured out accounts of her doings in Dublin. Aunt Kate had been very kind in a grand sort of manner. She had early morning tea and breakfast in bed b
ecause Aunt Kate said she looked peaky, and two young men took her out to a theatre and dinner respectively.

  “Were they nice?” Mark inquired.

  “Not bad,” she said carelessly. “The theatre one was all right because I didn’t have to talk much, but dinner was rather dull. I didn’t know what to say and I couldn’t understand the menu and he thought me very ignorant. But I met a very nice man at one of Aunt Kate’s dinners, much older and more like you. I could talk to him, and he wanted to take me out, too, only he was married, so Aunt Kate wouldn’t let me go because his wife was away. Wasn’t it silly?”

  Mark smiled, and had the passing thought that Clancy would probably always get on better with older men.

  “You made quite an impression on Aunt Kate,” Clancy rattled on. “She said if you had been Clodagh’s choice she would have understood it.” Her voice faltered. “And Conn —have you seen Conn?”

  “Once or twice,” said Mark, his hands steady on the wheel. “The farm is sold, Clancy.”

  “I know. He wrote and told Aunt Kate.”

  They drove in silence for a little way. Some of the animation had died out of her face and she looked tired.

  “Will Clodagh be coming for Christmas?” Mark asked, but she shook her head.

  “No. I think Conn’s going to them. It will be a dull Christmas without them. Not a bit like old times.”

  But better, all the same, Mark thought, and told her she had missed stirring the Christmas pudding, but he had made a wish for her instead.

  “Oh, what?” she cried, all animation again. “What did you wish for me, Mark? I hope it was something nice.”

  “I shan’t tell you,” he retorted. “No wish comes true if it’s told. Didn’t you know that?”

  “Yes,” she said, “only if I knew what it was I might be able to oblige. I expect it was something like being more punctual or tidy, or not answering you back or something.”

  He laughed.

  “You are a child! Is that all you imagine I think about in connection with you? Anyway, I told you I was making a wish for you, not for myself.”

  “Oh—” she snuggled suddenly against his shoulder “—it’s a great comfort to be back again. You’re almost my only friend.”

  He glanced down at her face against the rough tweed of his coat, and remembered her that summer’s day, a crown of golden buttercups on her black head, saying softly: “We’ve been together all our lives, Conn, Clodagh and me. I haven’t any other friends.” Conn and Clodagh were lost to her now for a time, and he must try to fill the gap.

  Clancy had brought small presents for everyone, and she distributed them among her family in the evening, and was gay and very amusing about her visit to Dublin. Mark caught Kevin looking at her once or twice with a puzzled frown, and when she had gone to bed he said:

  “I hate to say it, but the girl’s improved by her visit to Kate.”

  “Kate always had very good taste in dress,” said Aunt Bea, putting her knitting away in the canvas bag.

  “Och, clothes!” exclaimed Kevin impatiently. “I have it!” She growing up! By the saints, the girl’s growing up!” He looked at Mark and his sister with a comic air of dismay.

  “I’ve been telling you that for some time, Kilmallin,” Mark said a little dryly.

  The weather was cold but dry and, on Christmas Eve, Mark and Brian and Clancy went up to Grania’s Cave to collect holly. It was one of Clancy’s favourite spots and she told Mark, at great length the story of Grania O’Malley, the sea-queen and pirate who made an alliance with England in the days of Elizabeth.

  He listened, while they cut the branches which grew at the mouth of the cave, very charmed by her Irish gift for story-telling and the lilt in her voice as she talked.

  They sat down to rest in the shelter of the cave and Mark lit a cigarette.

  “You’re happier now, aren’t you, Clancy?” he asked.

  She looked out across the rough moorland dropping away from the foot of the hills to the loch, small and shining in the distance, and sighed.

  ‘Yes,” she said, “except when I think of Slievaun. Micky-the-post told me the last of the horses were gone and Bridie keens in the kitchen as if it was a wake. It is a wake. The wake of Slievaun.”

  “I think,” said Mark a little dryly, “it’s a good thing Conn is marrying Clodagh and not you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you would get hurt. You have a great feeling for fundamental things, and Conn, I should say, like Clodagh, has none.”

  “Yes,” she said with a queer little smile, “I realize that now. He’s the type that emigrates to America to make his fortune. As if money mattered!”

  “It does a little, you know.”

  “Only for necessities, No one needs more than enough to live on.”

  He looked at her with fondness.

  “You should make a contented wife and save your husband a lot of worry,” he said.

  She laughed.

  “Agnes would tell you I’ll provide him with plenty of trouble.”

  Mark’s eyes were lazy.

  “Oh, I’ve no doubt he’d have his hands full dealing with arguments and crying rages and, possibly, even violence,” he teased, “and who would sew his buttons on and darn his socks and get his meals punctually, if he got any meals at all?”

  “I suppose,” she said doubtfully, “I could learn. You make me sound awfully useless, Mark. Perhaps I had better start practising darning socks.”

  “Perhaps you had, but not on mine,” he retorted.

  For the rest of the day they decorated the house, with Michael John to help. Their voices echoed in the hall as they called to one another, and Clancy fell off a stepladder and sat on the floor, shrieking with laughter, until Mark picked her up and dusted her down.

  She had stuck a piece of holly in her hair, and it gave her a rakish and very charming air.

  Michael John winked at Mark.

  “She’s the boy for me,” he said in a hoarse whisper, “always was worth ten of the other, but Kilmallin never could see it. An’ now there’s Conn and Miss Clodagh leppin’ off to get marrit an’ my Miss Clancy, the pick of the bunch, grievin’ for Slievaun. It’s glad I am you were sent, sir, for it’s yourself is the wan to manage her, though you’re English from over the water, God help you.”

  Clancy’s voice came impatiently from the top of the steps.

  “Stop jabbering, you silly old man, and hand me up the hammer.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHRISTMAS passed very quietly except in the kitchen regions, where much drink was taken and laughter penetrated even to the hall. Aunt Bea paid her annual visit to tenants and village people in the morning, accompanied this year by Clancy and Mark, who drove them. In the evening, Kevin shut himself into his study with the whisky decanter and fell asleep in a chair and was there all night, and the others went early to bed.

  “New Year’s Eve is the real night,” Clancy told Mark. “The maids do apple-bobbing and chestnuts and looking in mirrors for husbands instead of on Hallowe’en, I don’t know why—I think it must be a custom in this part of Ireland. We all have to go to the servants’ hall to drink punch and porter at midnight, and send out the dark man with a lump of coal. It should be you this year, because you’re the stranger, but you’re too fair, so I expect it will have to be Pat Doyle again.”

  Conn came over to dinner on New Year’s Eve. It would be his last visit before he left for Dublin, and he said it was pleasant to sit in comfort for one evening and feed in a civilized way.

  After dinner they all joined in the apple-bobbing in the servants’ hall, with the exception of Kevin, who said he had no time for such nonsense and would do his duty by the servants at midnight and not before. Mark watched Clancy with Conn and was relieved to think he would soon be gone. Clancy was gay and charming with him, but something seemed to have gone from their old relationship. She was not quite at her ease with him any more.

  Conn caught Clancy’s h
and as they came through the hall.

  “Will you come over to Slievaun tomorrow for the last time?” he said. ‘You haven’t been near us since the farm was sold, and I’d like you to see it once more before I go. Say you’ll come, Clancy. Spend New Year’s Day with me and put a blessing on my new life.”

  “A blessing...” Her eyes were strange, as if they saw a long way. “All right, Conn, I’ll come and put a blessing on you—and on Slievaun,” she said, and he kissed her on the nose and went into the library.

  She stood where he had left her in the silent hall, staring into the shadows. The maids would be lighting candles now, and gazing into mirrors hoping to see the apparitions of their future husbands appear behind them. Clancy gave herself a little shake, and, smiling at her own folly, lit a candle and held it up to the big mirror, in its scrolled gilt frame, which hung on the wall. Her reflection stared back at her, strange and solemn in the wavering light.

  All at once she felt her flesh go cold. A man’s face, pale and indeterminate, appeared in the shadows above her head, and she gave a little gasp, and turned quickly, spilling candle grease on her new frock. But it was only Mark who had come to look for her, and she began to laugh.

  “Oh! You gave me such a fright!” she said.

  “What were you doing?” he asked curiously, “—admiring your new finery when you thought no one was looking?”

  “No,” she said. “I was looking in the mirror like the maids. I thought you were the ghost of my future husband.” He did not laugh, but gave her a long grave look she could not quite understand, then he took the candle gently from her and blew it out.

  “You’ve spilt some wax on your dress,” he said. “Shall we go back to the others?”