Jean Grainger Box Set: So Much Owed, Shadow of a Century, Under Heaven's Shining Stars

by Jean Grainger

  Solange stood by as Richard put his arms around the grey-haired woman and held her tightly.

  ‘You were so good to them, Mrs Canty. My mother’s last letter told how much ye did to ease my poor father’s passing, and how skilful ye were at nursing her. I can’t believe she won’t be in the kitchen or he in his surgery ever again.’

  He spoke quietly; their loss was shared. Mrs Canty was clearly much more than a housekeeper – more like one of the family. After a few minutes, he stepped back and indicated Solange.

  ‘Mrs Canty, this is Madame Solange Allingham, Jeremy’s wife.’

  The woman hurried towards Solange, dabbing her eyes with the corner of her apron.

  ‘I beg your pardon, I didn’t see you there. What must you think of us at all? You are very welcome to Dunderrig, pet, and I’m sorry it’s only me here to greet ye. We didn’t know exactly when to expect you, you see. My Eddie is out and about somewhere, and Mrs Buckley is upstairs having a lie-down. She’s been very out of sorts all day.’

  She took Solange’s hand while sadly shaking her head.

  ‘I remember your husband well – a lovely lad and no mistake. He was like a ray of sunshine around the place when he used to visit. Dr Richard’s mother, God rest her soul, used to knock a great kick out of him altogether – the antics and tricks acting out of him! I was so sorry to hear he had been killed, and ye only a young couple starting out in your lives. ’Twas a terrible thing that war. So many grand lads like Jeremy, gone forever.’

  The woman spoke so quickly that Solange struggled to understand her – but she could tell enough to be moved by the kind way this woman spoke about her dead husband and warmed to her at once.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Canty. Yes, my husband often spoke about the happy times he enjoyed in Ireland.’ Solange hoped her English was clear enough.

  Whether Mrs Canty fully understood her or not, she seemed satisfied with Solange’s halting answer. ‘You’re very welcome here, especially now. God knows, with the new baby arriving any minute, we’ll be all up in the air soon. I’ll tell you, Dr Richard, she’s not great at all today. I’ve been trying to get her to eat a bit all day long, but she’s not having a bar of it. You’d think she’d be all excitement over having you home after all this time! Normally, women get a bit of a boost just before, you know, getting things ready for the baby and all that, but she just lies in bed, the only thing she’s interested in is writing letters…’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Canty, that will be all.’

  Both Richard and Mrs Canty turned with a start, and Solange followed their eyes to the top of the stairs from where the cold, sharp voice had come.

  ‘It is perhaps not so inconceivable that I would not wish to eat, given the standard of cuisine in this house. Please attend to your duties.’

  The haughty tone brooked no argument. A tall, blonde woman was descending the staircase, which curved elegantly around the walls into the large square entrance hall. She was dressed in an ivory silk gown, over which she wore a contrasting coffee-coloured robe, and she moved remarkably gracefully, given the advanced stage of her pregnancy; despite the large bump, she was slender, almost thin. She looked pale and tired, but also something else. She seemed to exude disdain, not just for the verbose Mrs Canty but for her entire surroundings. She certainly seemed to show no delight at the safe return of her husband.

  ‘Edith, you look wonderful, blooming. Mrs Canty was telling us you haven’t been well? It’s so good to see you.’ Richard crossed to the bottom of the stairs, offering his hand to assist her down the last few steps. She allowed him to take it and turned a powdered cheek for him to kiss, but Solange could see her actions lacked enthusiasm. Richard must have noticed it too – having pecked his wife lightly, he released her limp fingers and retreated a few steps, looking around him, clearly searching for something else to say. His eyes alighted on Solange. ‘Edith, this is Solange Allingham, Jeremy’s wife.’

  Edith Buckley heaved a huge, sarcastic sigh as she approached Solange. ‘Yes, Richard, I did gather who this was. You wrote to me several times to tell me she was coming, and it is not as if Dunderrig is such a hive of social activity that I would confuse the guests. Mrs Allingham, what on earth possessed you to leave France for this godforsaken place?’

  Uncertain how to respond, Solange silently extended her own hand, but Edith ignored it.

  ‘Oh well, you’re here now, so you will have to make the best of it. Presumably, you will either expire from boredom or food poisoning, but if you are determined to take your chances… Oh, Mrs Canty, are you still here?’

  Mrs Canty marched off furiously to the kitchen, saying loudly how someone had to prepare a ‘good, wholesome meal’ for the poor travellers. Richard seemed unsure what he should do next. He made to put his hand on his wife’s back but the look she gave him was so frosty, he changed his mind.

  Solange hurried to lighten the mood. ‘Madame Buckley, I must thank you for inviting me into your home. Please believe me, after the past few years in France, a quiet life is something I wholeheartedly desire, so do not be concerned I will be bored. Besides, when the new little one arrives, it will be a very busy household. I hope to be of some service.’ She tried to infuse her voice with gratitude and friendliness to bring some much-needed warmth into the situation.

  Edith shrugged. ‘I suppose so. But I warn you, it will all seem deathly dull. I am sorry about your husband. Still, if countries insist on colonising smaller nations then war must be an inevitable outcome.’

  Solange was nonplussed. Was Edith saying that Jeremy deserved to die because of the past decisions of English and French rulers? Surely she could not be so callous. She glanced at Richard, who had coloured with embarrassment.

  Nonchalantly changing the subject, Edith addressed her husband, ‘Richard, please contact Dr Bateman to come out. I’m not feeling well, and I need to consult him. I’m going back to bed. Welcome home. Please don’t disturb me until he arrives.’ She turned away.

  Richard followed his wife across the hall to the foot of the sweeping stairs. ‘Perhaps it’s something I can help you with? It is rather a long way for Bateman to come…’

  ‘Richard,’ Edith said wearily, without looking back at him. ‘While I accept you are a doctor, you are not my doctor. You have been conspicuous by your absence throughout my confinement so it would be wholly inappropriate for you to involve yourself in my care at this late stage. Please contact Dr Bateman as soon as possible.’ Moving wearily but not slowly, she climbed the stairs.

  ‘Very well. If that’s what you want, then of course I’ll contact him – and then maybe we could have tea?’

  Richard was almost pleading. But Edith had already disappeared into a room on the second floor, and his request was met with the closing of the door behind her. He turned anxiously to Solange.

  ‘She is very tired. And she is so devoted to the cause of Irish independence. She didn’t mean anything against poor Jeremy. Her opinions…she is not a supporter of the Allies. But of course, she doesn’t support the other side either. I’m afraid I have to leave you a moment to call Dr Bateman. Can you take a seat here, until Mrs Canty returns? She will see you to your room and feed you to within an inch of your life and hopefully you’ll start to feel normal again.’ Then he backtracked as if worrying that he had sounded as crass as his wife. ‘I mean obviously not normal, not after everything, but maybe you can feel just a little better. Welcome to Dunderrig.’

  While Solange waited for the housekeeper’s re-emergence, she studied her new surroundings. The entrance hall was warm and welcoming, in stark contrast to its mistress. It was as generously proportioned as any reception room and carpeted with a rich-red-and-gold rug. The furniture – a hall stand, a writing table and chair, a loudly ticking grandfather clock, and the upholstered chaise longue on which she had seated herself – were all highly polished. Oil paintings – landscapes and horses, mainly – adorned the silk-covered walls. The cantilevered stairc
ase had a deep pile runner at its centre. A passageway led from the hall towards the back of the house. It was down this that Mrs Canty had disappeared and, based on the aromas of baking, it was connected to the kitchen. To her left and right were four large oak doors, also richly polished and all closed. Richard had gone through one of them into what was clearly a doctor’s surgery. Why had Edith insisted Richard call her a different doctor? If she, Solange, had been pregnant with Jeremy’s child, her husband would have been the only doctor she would have trusted to attend her.

  She glanced up to the second floor. The mahogany banister became a small but ornate balcony for the rooms above, all the doors of which opened out onto the landing. The effect meant the entranceway felt like a stage and the upper gallery the viewing point. Solange felt exposed and wished that Mrs Canty would reappear. She dreaded the possibility of Edith’s return.

  ‘Ah Lord, did he leave you here all on your own? Where’s he gone to, in the name of God? I don’t know what’s happening to everyone in this house, honest to God, I don’t. God knows, in the mistress’s time, Mrs Buckley now, I mean old Mrs Buckley, Dr Richard’s mother, no visitor would have been left alone in the hall, but I don’t know, things are very different around here these days. Poor Dr Richard, home after that terrible war and you’d think his wife would be happy to see him anyway.’

  The housekeeper’s voice dropped to a whisper as she pointed theatrically upwards while ushering Solange down the passageway into the kitchen.

  ‘She’s a bit of a handful, and she can be very cutting when she wants to be. Poor old Dr Buckley and the mistress, God be good to them, nearly drove themselves cracked trying to please her, but the day young Dr Richard left her here in Dunderrig while he went off to the war was a sad day for this house. At first, he’d taken work in Dublin to please her, but he couldn’t rest easy when he heard from your husband about all the terrible goings-on at the front, and in the end, nothing would satisfy him but to follow Jeremy to France. He thought his wife would understand how she would be better off waiting for him in Dunderrig, and maybe look after his parents for him. But she stayed above in her room with a face that’d turn milk sour. Sure, even when the poor doctor got the flu earlier this year and we lost him, and the mistress less than a week later, not a budge out of herself above! And there were never two kinder people, God rest them. They were lovely, lovely people. I know she’s from Dublin and not used to life in the country, but she’s stuck in something to do with the rising and all that nonsense. Her father was some kind of a bigwig professor in the college up there, and he knew them all, Pearse and Yeats and all of them. We’re not fancy enough at all for her, to my way of thinking. Sure, she just writes letters all day and gets letters back, too. I don’t know who they’re from, but ’tisn’t right for a married woman to be going on with that kind of thing. Though I keep my own counsel, because of course, Dr Richard won’t hear a word against her. He was forever writing to us to make sure she was all right and what have you, and Mrs Buckley decided he had enough to worry about over there so she told him ’twas all grand, but I’d say he got a bit of a land when he met her above in Dublin. Though she came back expecting, so I suppose they must have worked it out some kind of a way.’ She softened, and chuckled.

  Solange found herself standing in the middle of a warm, cosy kitchen that looked out onto a cobbled courtyard. The stones shone in the wet twilight of a winter’s day.

  ‘Now, you poor misfortune, you must be perished alive after sitting in that car for so long. My husband Eddie – he does the gardens, you see, and a bit of fetching and carrying around the house – he drove it down to the boat yesterday and got the train and bus back so ’twould be there for ye when ye got off the boat, and he said it was cosier on the train by far. Sit down there, let you, and I’ll get you a bowl of soup to warm your bones. Were you ever here in Ireland before?’

  Mrs Canty’s patter was so like a babbling brook – comforting and restful, whatever its content – it took Solange a second to realise she had been asked a question.

  ‘In Ireland? Jamais… I mean, no, never. Jeremy always said he would bring me here when the war was over but… Well, that was not meant to be.’ Solange tried to recover, but Mrs Canty noticed the break in her voice. Turning from the large range, she crossed the floor and took Solange by surprise by enveloping her in a warm hug.

  ‘Your husband was a grand lad entirely, and I’m sure you brought him great joy in his short life. ’Tis better you had him, even for a short time, and had the happiness of a good marriage than years stretching out without it.’ And she nodded knowingly again in the direction of upstairs.

  Anxious not to take sides, Solange said, ‘Perhaps things will be better after the arrival of the new baby. Madame Buckley is probably just tired. I do not know myself as I have no children, but I imagine the last weeks can be exhausting. So, perhaps, once the baby is born safe and well, Madame Buckley will feel better.’

  ‘Hmm. I don’t know about that. I was never blessed with children either, but I know plenty of mothers and none of them are like herself above, I can tell you that.’

  Mrs Canty placed a steaming hot bowl of creamy vegetable soup and a slice of brown soda bread thickly spread with butter on the table in front of Solange. After the deprivation in France, the richness of the food was glorious. Realising that she was very hungry, she ate greedily while Mrs Canty continued in the same vein.

  ‘I don’t know what to make of her. She arrived here with all her grand notions, but then she didn’t change one thing about the place. I mean, even before she was expecting, you’d think a young bride coming into a place, especially a place like Dunderrig, would want to put her own stamp on the house. But ’twas as if she was a guest, and one that mightn’t be staying at that. Very vexed she was with Dr Richard, over him joining up, I suppose, but ’twasn’t as if she was heartbroken without him. Sure, she has no meas on him at all; she treats him no better than an auld stray dog. His parents now, the old doctor and Mrs Buckley, they idolised young Richard. He was their only one, you see. They nearly went out of their minds with worry when he went over there to France, and who could blame them? Sure, what has France to do with us here?’

  Suddenly, remembering that Solange was French, Mrs Canty corrected herself hastily, ‘Not that we thought the other side should win or anything… But it’s just they were so worried, and him the only son of the house and all, but when they heard he was going to be with Jeremy, well that made them feel a bit easier in their minds. They were mad about Jeremy. We all were.’

  ‘My husband loved you all, too. And he never wanted Richard to leave his parents. In truth, he was angry when Richard followed him. He didn’t want his friend to be in danger, even though when Richard came, Jeremy was so happy to see him and so glad to have the help of such a good doctor.’

  Remembering her young husband’s concern for his friend, Solange felt very far from home, and from him. Jeremy had been the essential link between her and Richard; in Amiens, she had only ever met the Irish doctor in Jeremy’s company. Richard had never called on her separately or even chatted to her apart from a polite enquiry after her health. Yet here she was in Richard Buckley’s house, in this foreign country so far from anything she’d ever known, and without Jeremy. Perhaps this had been a terrible mistake. Yet there was nothing left to which to return. Maman and Papa both gone, Pierre and Jean-Paul too, and the city in ruins. You can’t ever go back, only forward. She had no choice. Richard had saved her from a life inhabited only by ghosts. At least, here in this strange place, she could be of use – help with the new baby, and begin again. Richard had thrown her a lifeline, and though at the moment drowning seemed like a more appealing option, she knew that she could and would survive.

  ‘NOW PETEEN, WE BETTER get you to bed,’ announced Mrs Canty as she ushered Solange upstairs and into a pretty room overlooking the garden. The walls were covered with an exotic bird of paradise wallpaper, in royal blue and gold, and
on the teak double bed lay a beautifully embroidered cream bedspread. There were a large matching armoire and chest of drawers and a full-length mirror stood on a stand. The room was pleasantly warm and scented by a bunch of snowdrops arranged in a cut-glass bowl on the dresser. Her bags had been delivered to the room, presumably by the reticent Eddie, whom she still hadn’t met.

  ‘Les fleurs… The flowers. They are beautiful.’

  ‘Oh that’s himself, my Eddie, he grows them. Winter and summer he has flowers growing. He has Latin names for everything; you’d be demented trying to remember them all. There’s nothing he can’t grow, that husband of mine.’ Her voice glowed with pride. ‘Now so, let you have a good sleep, and we’ll see you tomorrow sometime. Don’t be in any rush to get up now, do you hear me?’

  Solange slept fitfully, despite the comfortable bed. She tossed and turned and dreamed of France, and of her parents – though never of Jeremy. That often struck her as strange, how his loss was like a large gaping hole of pain in her every waking moment, yet once she slept, he never entered her dreams. The countryside was so quiet; only the crowing of a rooster in the early hours disturbed the peace. Lying awake, she decided to make the best of this situation. She would do her utmost to be a good friend to Richard’s wife. Though Mrs Canty seemed a kind person, there was probably not a woman on earth whom the housekeeper would have thought good enough for her precious young master. And although Edith had seemed very cold and even rude to her at first, Solange acknowledged that if Jeremy had brought a young widow into their home, she too would have been cautious at first, however much she trusted her husband.

  As dawn crept across the sky, she dozed off into a light sleep. She was disturbed by a piercing shriek from across the hall. Dashing out of bed, she threw on her dressing gown and ran in the direction of the sound. She found herself at the door of Edith’s bedroom and hesitated, unsure if Edith was in there alone or if Richard had already joined her. A second later, another loud scream rent the air. This time, tentatively, Solange opened the door. The room was in complete darkness; she moved in the direction of the bed.