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

by Jean Grainger

  ‘They’re fine. Ruling the roost. A boy and a girl, James and Juliet. They’re two and a half now and full of mischief. Sure you know yourself with your own lads.’ Richard’s tone was light. There was no indication that the men had been at loggerheads just days earlier.

  ‘The time goes so quickly. It seems like only yesterday our boys were babes in arms and now they’re growing up. The eldest will be off to Eton soon.’ He paused, staring into the flames. ‘Look, about that other thing. I need to present a report to my superiors. The local population, you know, providing aid to the rebels – it can’t be tolerated. Even if you are a doctor. But I won’t be enquiring too deeply if you understand me. It’s the best I can do.’

  Richard smiled, drained his whiskey and handed the glass to the colonel. Putting on his coat and hat he said, ‘Good night. Let me know how Artie fares.’

  Chapter 5

  ‘The thing is, Mrs Allingham, I know they don’t mean a bit of harm, but they are going to get hurt someday. I’ve told them over and over they’re to stay out of my orchard, but they don’t take a tack of notice of me. The sooner they go up to the master above in the school the better, if you don’t mind me saying so.’ Ted Collins was working himself up to a rant about the twins breaking into his orchard again.

  ‘Monsieur Collins, I am désolée, so sorry. I spoke to James and Juliet last time, and they promised me that they would no more go in your orchard, but they say your apples are the sweetest in all of Ireland and so… They are little children, and it is hard for them to resist, n’est-ce pas?’

  Solange’s charm had its usual disarming effect on Ted. She watched his face return to a normal colour.

  ‘Ah, sure, don’t I know they’re only children. But if I let them at it, I’ll have every child in the place scaling the walls and not an apple left come September.’

  ‘I understand, Monsieur. It is most frustrating, I know. I will have their father speak to them tonight, I assure you. They have been promised a trip to the mart, but if they go into your garden again, it will be cancelled. Please be assured we will deal with them most strictly, Monsieur Collins.’

  ‘Ted, Mrs Allingham. Ted’s the name,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘Of course, Ted. And I am Solange. Now would you like a cup of tea before you go? Perhaps some of Mrs Canty’s porter cake?’

  Solange spotted two pairs of mischievous green eyes looking in through the kitchen window. Behind Ted’s back, she gestured to them to keep down. She knew the sight of James and Juliet would start a further diatribe from their neighbour. She’d already had a lecture from Mrs Kelly in the local post office and grocery shop, who said she distinctly saw James trying to lift Juliet up high enough to reach the sweet jar while she was down at the other end of the counter getting the colouring pencils he had asked her for. Solange defended them, explaining that it was just a game, and they wouldn’t have helped themselves, but Mrs Kelly was not convinced. She was a bitter, miserable woman anyway, in Solange’s opinion. Luckily, the white-blond heads and sparkling green eyes of the twins could melt even the hardest of hearts; they managed to charm virtually everyone they met. Except, of course, their mother.

  Edith had not changed discernibly towards them since the day they were born. The children knew she was their mother. They spoke to her politely if they passed her on the stairs, and they took tea with her every Sunday in the drawing room – they disliked this latter ritual because Edith insisted they were dressed formally and behave impeccably. She never hugged or even touched them, but neither did she speak to them sharply or with the rude malice she reserved for Mrs Canty. She merely treated them as yet another vaguely boring aspect of Dunderrig.

  The twins loved their father; he adored them and despite his best efforts to get cross when they did something naughty, they knew they always had it in their power to make him laugh. Several nights a week, when he wasn’t called out on a medical emergency, he would read them stories as they sat on his lap in their pyjamas by the range, giving all the characters different voices. Solange loved to watch them.

  Edith had insisted the twins should have a bedroom each from the beginning; she found it unseemly that a boy and a girl, even ones so young, should share a room.

  Juliet’s room was decorated as Edith deemed a little girl’s should be, complete with china dolls she never played with and embroidery sets she never used. All the furnishings were sent from Dublin and were, in Solange’s opinion, too fussy and frilly for a little girl of Juliet’s temperament. The little girl loved music, and Solange was beginning to teach her the piano. She played French folk songs by ear, and Juliet picked them up very quickly. She made a note to herself to ask Richard to teach her some Irish melodies as all she knew so far were French ones. Richard was a reluctant but powerful singer, on the few occasions he could be pressed into performing. Juliet must have got her musical talent from him.

  James’s bedroom was decorated with motor cars and utterly failed to reflect his love of art. He didn’t dare do any painting in there, in case he accidentally got a stain on any of the expensive fabrics. Instead, he spent hours at the big kitchen table alongside Solange, painting with water colours or doing charcoal drawings and leaf rubbings.

  Despite their elaborately furnished and decorated rooms, by the morning the young twins usually ended up together in Solange’s bed. Richard knew about this but chose not to acknowledge it, as to do so would be to deliberately go against his wife’s instructions. Since Edith never went to tuck the twins in or check on them during the night, it was easy not to mention the sleeping arrangements. Besides, he was glad that Solange was willing to show the twins so much affection as, despite his hopes, Edith had never softened towards her children.

  As Solange returned to the kitchen, having seen Ted out the front door, she found her charges had sneaked in the back door. Mrs Canty was giving them freshly baked soda bread and homemade blackberry jam – their favourite snack.

  Juliet was cross-questioning Mrs Canty as usual. She was always full of questions. James sat beside her, always interested in the answers but choosing to let Juliet lead, as she did in everything.

  ‘Why are you so chatty, and Eddie doesn’t say hardly anything?’ asked the child, her mouth full and jam on her cheeks.

  Mrs Canty pealed with laughter. ‘Well, child, sure there couldn’t be two of us talking all the time now, could there? So I do the talking for the both of us!’

  ‘Well, our daddy doesn’t talk as much as you, but I think you talk more than anyone in the whole wide world, and our mammy doesn’t talk much either, and Solange talks but only in French because she has two brains, a French brain and an Irish brain, but the French one is bigger because she lived there for longer.’ Juliet delivered the pronouncement with all the certainty of a precocious five-year-old.

  ‘Eddie talks to us, though. He says when we are seven, he’ll teach us how to – Ow!’ Juliet glared at her brother, who had kicked her ankle under the table. He was shaking his head rapidly. Eddie had promised them lessons on how to shoot rabbits, but James knew that Mrs Canty would not approve, so they’d decided to stay quiet about it. Juliet had forgotten the pact.

  Changing the subject, Solange tried to look cross. Launching into rapid French she began to scold them, ‘Bah, mes petits, qu’est-ce que vous faites? What will I do with you? Always Mr Collins comes here to say how you have taken his apples once again! If your papa hears this, he will say there will be no mart for you!’

  She plumped down in the big rocking chair, and the twins climbed onto her lap. They were tired after a long day making mischief. Despite her tone, she couldn’t resist kissing each of them on their tousled blond heads. They cuddled deeper into her. Their hair was bleached almost white by the sun, and despite Edith’s strict instructions that Juliet’s be teased and pinned, Solange often ‘forgot’ and let it fall down her back. James’s hair was cut short but in between cuts a riot of blond curls appeared. They were both brown from a sum
mer spent outside and freckles dusted their noses. They had their father’s unusual green eyes and drew attention wherever they went. Solange could not have been more proud of her beautiful, creative charges than if they had been her own flesh and blood.

  ‘We’re sorry, Solange,’ began James.

  ‘Non, non, en français s’il vous plaît.’

  ‘Nous sommes désolés, Solange,’ they chorused.

  ‘Je peux avoir du chocolat chaud, s’il te plaît?’ Juliet smiled sweetly. ‘We promise to be good.’

  ‘D’accord, chérie, but you must be très calme, very quiet, because Papa is speaking with Maman in the drawing room, and they do not wish to be disturbed. A little glass of chocolat chaud before your bath and then to bed tout de suite, d’accord?’

  ‘So can we go to the mart tomorrow?’ James’s eyes were bright with excitement. ‘Eddie said we had to ask you, Solange, and if you said yes, then we can go. Please say we can! Please!’ they chorused, making elaborate praying gestures at her.

  ‘Il faut demander à ton père.’

  ‘He’ll say whatever you say, you know that,’ James said, wise beyond his years.

  It had never been Solange’s deliberate intention that the twins be bilingual, but she found herself speaking to them in French when they were alone, which was most of the time. They were very bright children and so picked up both English and French simultaneously. Edith had never heard them speak anything but English, but Mrs Canty had told her beloved Dr Richard how the children were able to babble away in French with Solange and seemed to understand everything she said, though they instinctively reverted to English whenever anyone else came near.

  RICHARD LINGERED OUTSIDE THE kitchen window that evening. It was a mild day and Solange was in the kitchen, colouring with the children. To his amazement, his son and daughter, who had never in their short lives been further than Skibbereen, were explaining in detail and in flawless French the exact colour of a wet fox to Solange.

  When he entered the kitchen, the conversation seamlessly changed to English mid-sentence. Later, when the children were sleeping, Richard came back to the kitchen again.

  ‘You don’t have to stay in here, you know,’ he began. ‘I could ask Eddie to put a fire down in the drawing room any evening you wish to sit there, to read or whatever you enjoy.’

  ‘Non merci, Richard. I am comfortable here. I have this nice big rocking chair and if the children wake, they know where to find me. Would you like some tea or perhaps chocolat chaud? I made it earlier for the twins.’

  ‘That would be very nice, merci.’

  Smiling as she rose, she replied, ‘Ah, you are using your French. You should keep it up.’

  Sitting in the chair on the other side of the range, he watched her making the hot chocolate. ‘Perhaps I could aspire to the linguistic heights of my twins,’ he said, then smiled at her surprised expression. ‘I confess to eavesdropping on you earlier. It is remarkable how well they can communicate. How on earth did you teach them so well?’

  ‘I hope you do not mind. When I came here for the first time, my English was not so good, so it was natural for me to speak in my language to babies who do not know anyway. Then when they began to speak, I would teach them two words for everything, instead of just one. For example, I would say window then la fenêtre. They just picked it up that way, I think. If they were to land in France now, they would be taken for little French children.’

  ‘Well, I think it’s wonderful. They really are clever, aren’t they? Though I hear that the pair of scallywags are up to tricks again. Mrs Kelly gave me chapter and verse while I looked at her corns.’ Richard heaved a rueful sigh.

  ‘But Richard, she leaves this big jar of bonbons in front of little children’s eyes and never offers them one. Of course they will try to get them. It is mean, I think, teasing little ones like that. James and Juliet are so good really. Anyway, Ted Collins called today to say they were in his orchard again. I told him you would deal most strictly with them and there would be no trip to the mart if they are naughty.’ Solange kept smiling as she told Richard of all their latest misdemeanours which, as well as Ted and Mrs Kelly, included letting a neighbour’s ducks out of their pen because they had decided the poor birds should fly free.

  Richard accepted the cup of hot chocolate gratefully. It had been a very long day. The Civil War had finally ended, but feelings still ran high. Many scores had been left unsettled. De Valera might have issued a statement instructing the anti-treaty side to disarm, but not everyone was happy to do that.

  In many ways, the past two years had been much worse than the War of Independence. At least the lines of demarcation between the Irish and the British had been clear. The fact that young Artie Maxwell had returned from Victoria Hospital a healthy boy with a very impressive scar on his throat had also given Richard a certain protection from investigation. He’d managed to keep to his plan of helping anyone who needed it.

  The years that followed had been much more complicated. Families and communities had split over the treaty signed in 1921 by Michael Collins, which gave a sort of independence to most of the country while maintaining the six counties of Northern Ireland under British rule. They were mostly Unionist up there anyway, but some of the die-hard republicans here weren’t happy. Richard had despaired. He had seen enough senseless death and destruction to last several lifetimes and to watch his countrymen tear themselves apart like this was almost too much to bear. A few months before, he had been threatened by Free-Staters in Skibbereen, who had taken over from the British as per the terms of the treaty. They demanded that he not treat any bullet wounds without notifying the local barracks. Once again, Richard had referred them to his Hippocratic oath in which he had promised to use his skills to preserve life and alleviate pain where possible. Nowhere did the oath mention taking sides. He’d had to listen to jibes about how he’d put on a British uniform during the war and what more could they expect, but he rose above it. Luckily, he recognised one of the thugs as being a cousin of a man whose life he had saved after an ambush during the War of Independence. Richard had mildly enquired after the cousin’s health, and they had left it at that. Still, it was exhausting.

  The house seemed so still now, despite the troubles outside. He looked forward to those moments in the evenings when the children and Mrs Canty had gone to bed. He often sat with Solange, telling her about his day and hearing the latest devilment his twins had got up to. She was so restful and funny, she delighted him with her take on the characters of Dunderrig. When she first arrived, she had been so traumatised by all she’d endured that she had been slow to mix, but now she was part of the community. Her exotic good looks no longer drew too much attention. The men all still admired her as she walked up the aisle at mass on Sundays – her thick jet-black hair hung in corkscrew curls, and Mrs Canty’s cooking had restored her curvy figure. The women used to resent her beauty but as the years wore on and Solange showed no interest in leading their husbands astray, they had come to accept her.

  Yet things were so uncertain now, with the resentments between the two sides of the Civil War still bubbling beneath the surface – making life, in many ways, more dangerous than ever. He prayed his children, and all children, would be able to grow up in a time of peace. Free to live and love without this endless need to kill each other. Now though, peace seemed a very fragile thing indeed.

  Chapter 6

  Richard hoped things would be calm at home as he turned off the main road. It was the twins’ birthday, and they were having a tea party. He had listened to Edith complaining bitterly last night that Solange refused to dress the children as she wished and instead allowed them to roam like ragamuffins all over the village. She said she had spoken to Solange about it, but Solange had insisted that the fine linen and silk outfits she’d had sent from Dublin would be ruined if they played in them, and that’s why she allowed them to wear patched and mended clothes. Edith was at a loss to understand why on e
arth the children could not simply stay inside and stay clean. Why they had to scamper up trees and be driven around by Eddie on the cart was beyond her. She had taken to insisting they take tea in her room with her at four in the afternoon each day, instead of only on Sundays, and she had been most put out to overhear Juliet complaining about having to come home early every day and change into a pretty frock to have tea with her mother.

  Edith had caught her daughter declaring in her bright, high-pitched voice, ‘No one else has to dress up to see their mammy. Everyone else’s mammy is in the kitchen, but our mammy sits in her room all day. Reading letters and writing them. Why can’t you be our mammy, Solange?’

  Solange had shushed her and explained that she was a very lucky girl to have so many beautiful dresses to wear and that she should be on her best behaviour for her mother. She’d urged her to play the new song she had learned on the piano after tea; surely Edith would approve of piano playing as an activity for her daughter. If she could see how talented Juliet was, then she might offer some praise to her little daughter instead of constant criticism.

  Richard contemplated suggesting Edith have a more natural relationship with her children – take them for a walk or bake a cake in the kitchen – but he knew such ideas would be greeted with disdainful silence. Whenever he tried to improve things between his wife and their children, it came out as criticism. The last time he had suggested she do something vaguely maternal, Edith had sneered, ‘Ah yes, like Solange does, do you mean? The saintly French widow. Are you sure you only admire her qualities as a governess? I’ve seen how you look at her, Richard. You might be fooling yourself but not me.’

  Richard was horrified. His feelings for Solange were complex – certainly, she was a beautiful woman, kind and funny, and wonderful with the children, but he was a married man.

  It was true that he and his wife had not shared a bed since the birth of the twins. But that was not about him rejecting his wife; it was because Edith disliked physical and emotional intimacy. She always had. Even at the start of their relationship, before his decision to join up, she had only acquiesced to sexual relations stoically, as her duty; she had never been responsive to his touch. He had tried romance, flowers and sweet nothings, but it had been pointless. He’d considered asking Jeremy for advice at one stage but the thought of discussing his sex life with anyone, even his best friend, had made him blush.