Green Girl

by Sara Seale

  “Yes, he can,” she agreed. “I suppose in a way, the little girl’s very like him.”

  “‘Tis her aim to be that, poor toad, for the quare reverence she bears him,” Agnes replied with such matter-of-fact unexpectedness that Harriet’s mouth flew open in an ‘0’ of surprise.

  “But I thought—” she began, remembering Duff’s weary contention that the child had no fondness for him.

  “Then you thought like everyone else,” Agnes finished. “The child dotes on her pappy, an’ so I’m tellin’ you.”

  “Well, I hope you’re right, Agnes,” Harriet replied without much confidence, and old Jimsy, who had been polishing silver in a dark corner of the kitchen without paying the smallest attention to the conversation, remarked suddenly and with apparent irrelevance:

  “Wouldn’t it be time you was thinkin’ of changing that quare article you have for a dog, young miss?” Jimsy, for some reason best known to himself, had never taken to addressing her as ‘ma’am’ in private.

  “Change Uriah! But I’ve only just got him!” protested Harriet.

  “I was thinkin’ the craythur was a kind of a make-do, meanin’ no offence, for ‘tis onnatural to nurse a poor dumb animal to still the cravin’s of—”

  “Och, hould your whisht, you old divil!” Agnes admonished him quite sharply, and Harriet, the colour high in her cheeks, got herself out of the kitchen with what dignity she could muster, wondering whether Jimsy’s extraordinary speculations meant what she thought they did.

  But by the time she had got herself to bed at the end of that upsetting day, she no longer cared what any of them thought, experiencing again that desire for comfort and assurance which had beset her in her early days at the orphanage, and she buried her face in the pillow and wept with abandon.

  Much later, or perhaps it was really only a few minutes, she became aware of Duff standing beside the bed, holding a candle.

  “For heaven’s sake, child, what’s the matter?” he said, and for a moment her tears stopped in the sheer surprise of seeing him there.

  “I—I’m sorry, did I disturb you?” she said, trying to hold her breath on the next sob.

  “No, I wasn’t in bed, but I was thoroughly alarmed by these violent sounds of distress next door. What is it?” and he put the candlestick on the bedside table and sat down on the bed.

  “Nonie’s upset you, I suppose,” he said, and she began to cry again.

  “She hates me! I should never have come here!” she sobbed, abandoning all pretence of reason, and Duff took her into his arms, holding her and soothing her in such a faithful imitation of those nebulous characters she used to invent for herself in adolescence that for a brief moment she thought she must be dreaming.

  When she was quieter, he laid her gently back against the pillows and stroked the tangled fringe back from her hot forehead.

  “Listen, you silly child, that rather tiresome daughter of mine’s taken quite a shine to you in her own queer way—says you’re a lot better than she expected and is inclined to suppose that I must have somehow tricked you into marriage! She doesn’t, you see, consider you are much older than herself, and thinks I’ve taken an unfair advantage, and she’s possibly right at that, so cheer up!”

  “Doesn’t she know she was the main reason for you getting married?”

  “Oh, my dear girl, have a little common sense!” he exclaimed. “One doesn’t discuss one’s reasons for remarriage with an eight-year-old child, neither was she my sole reason, though it was the easiest one to give you at the time.”

  “I’d forgotten. Samantha was the other, wasn’t she?” she said unguardedly, and knew it for an ill-considered remark as she saw him stiffen.

  “Samantha?” he repeated on a cool note of enquiry, and she looked away, not wanting to meet the withdrawal in his eyes, but she could not escape his elongated shadow thrown on the wall, still and a little grotesque, reminding her he was waiting for an answer.

  “Shouldn’t I have mentioned her?” she said at last, trying to retreat and at the same time give him an opening to admit her as an equal if he would, but it only had the effect of shutting her firmly outside.

  “I see no reason why you shouldn’t, providing you keep that imagination of yours in check,” he replied. “Has she been encouraging your passion for romantic drama with brightly-coloured tales of the past?”

  “She only satisfied my natural curiosity—things you wouldn’t tell me yourself,” she answered vaguely.

  “Such as?”

  “Just gossip, mostly, I expect. I wasn’t prying again, Duff, but it’s natural to want to know something about the man you’ve married, surely?”

  “Such as?” he said again, and she experienced a strong and most unbecoming desire to retaliate with the schoolgirl rudeness Nonie had roused in her.

  “Such as your taste in toothpaste, whether you shave once a day or twice, and like your eggs soft or hard boiled, how your nose got broken—if it did—if you wear the same underclothes winter and summer, and if you have headaches, or toothaches or colds on the chest. I—I don’t even know how old you are!”

  He rubbed his fingers through his hair, disordering it still further and surveyed her with a rather helpless expression.

  “Dear me!” he said. “What a curious list to seem so important.”

  “It’s the little things that are important to a wife, but as we—we don’t share the—the—ordinary intimacies, I can’t find out for myself, can I?” she said, and he smiled a shade sardonically.

  “And were those the items upon which Samantha enlightened you?” he asked, and she looked uneasy.

  “Of course not—if I’d asked her those sort of questions she would have thought our marriage odder than it is, wouldn’t she?” she said, and his eyes were suddenly gentle.

  “I’m glad to hear discretion can put a brake on your curiosity,” he said. “Well, for your information, I’m not fussy as to my brand of toothpaste, neither to the timing of my eggs which can be variable, according to Agnes’ mood. I should shave twice a day to avoid the five o’clock shadow, but frequently don’t, and I’m thirty-seven years old. Satisfied?”

  “Thirty-seven?” she repeated, smiling up at him with the alert interest of someone storing up precious information.

  “More than twice your age. Does that shock you?”

  “No,” she said, “but it explains things a little.” It explained, she hoped, that insistence on treating her like a child which she was beginning to find so defeating to a desire for growth and expansion. “Couldn’t you—couldn’t you forget the difference in age sometimes?”

  His glance was tender and, at the same time, a little wry.

  “You make it difficult very often with your polite acceptance of what I choose to give and those woolly daydreams of yours. I’m giving you time to grow.”

  “And then—when you think I’ve grown?”

  “There’s no telling, is there? We’ll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, don’t run to Samantha for more serious information. I’ve no doubt she’s already taken advantage of your gullibility and trotted out old rumours and unpaid scores. Understand?”

  She took a deep breath and shut her eyes.

  “What I understand perfectly well is that you and she once had an affair, which doesn’t surprise me at all, or shock me—or upset me. Did you think it would?” she said very quickly before her courage failed her.

  “If by that you mean why didn’t I tell you myself, I didn’t think such ancient history concerned you,” he said. “However, I’d guessed Samantha was hardly likely to keep such a satisfying titbit to herself. Was she trying to make mischief?”

  “Oh, no, I don’t think so—just putting me in the picture, she said.”

  “I’m sure she did, but Samantha’s picture only has room for one, so don’t be too flattered. Well, I can’t muzzle the indiscreet lady even if I wished to, so remember the next time you have one of those cosy get-togethers that your charming gu
llibility is an open target for anyone with an axe to grind. In other words, don’t believe all you hear. Now it’s time you stopped talking nonsense and went to sleep.”

  “Will you leave the door open?” she asked.

  “Yes, of course, if that will reassure you,” he said, and she curled up contentedly, aware that sleep, held off so long, was suddenly swooping down upon her with a blissful fuzzing of the edges of conscious thought.

  “It’s the first time the door has stood open between us,” she murmured drowsily. “Will you kiss me goodnight, Duff?” He bent over the bed and she was only dimly aware, as her heavy eyelids closed, that she had slipped her arms round his neck as naturally as though it was a long-accustomed habit.

  When she awoke the next morning the intervening door was closed and Molly was standing by the bed with a breakfast tray just as she had that first morning at the Castle.

  “I never have breakfast in bed,” Harriet said, trying to struggle into a sitting position under the weight of the tray and at the same time prevent Uriah from turning his attentions to her eggs and bacon. “What’s the time?”

  “Gone ten, but himself toult Agnes to lave you be for it was sleep you needed. Was you took in the night, ma’am?” Molly’s eyes held a lively curiosity, and Harriet realised that since it was her daily duty to do the bedrooms, it was only too probable that by now the girl had a pretty shrewd idea of the relations existing between husband and wife.

  “I couldn’t sleep that’s all,” Harriet replied rather shortly. “Has Miss Nonie had her breakfast and been given something to do?”

  She spoke so like the nursery governess of popular conception that Molly giggled.

  “That wan finds her own pleasures. You don’t need to trouble yourself with her, ma’am.”

  “Don’t you like her, Molly?”

  “Ah, sure, she gives no trouble, so why should I care one way or the other?” the girl replied carelessly.

  “We must think of something to please her—something special. Oh, of course, there’ll be Christmas these holidays; all children can enjoy that,” Harriet said, the delight of her own not very distant childhood still fresh in her mind, but Molly observed with rather a depressing truth:

  “Sure, an’ what’s Christmas without the childer? One little girl sittin’ down to turkey an’ plum puddin’ as solemn as you plaze, an’ no rough games to shake it all down afterwards an’ no tree to share with other little friends.”

  “But of course we shall have a tree! And all the children from the farms and the tenancies can come up for tea and Nonie will be hostess and hand out presents, which I’m sure she would enjoy and—and—” Harriet’s excited words tailed off as she saw the lack of response in Molly’s face, and she finished uncertainly: “Don’t you think that’s a good idea, Molly?”

  “Ah, sure, there’s nothin’ wrong with the idea, but you’ll not get the old biddy downstairs washin’ up for a crowd oi childer bringin’ in dirt an’ turning the place upside down,” Molly said, presumably referring to Agnes with her usual disrespect.

  There was no need, Harriet found, to approach the mildly astonished Duff in a spirit of battle.

  “My dear child! I thought we’d been through all this before. Fill the place with holly and tinsel and balloons and all the messy clutter you can lay hands on if it will make you happy—it won’t make any difference to me,” he said.

  She had found him strolling along the shore of the lough before luncheon.

  “And the tree and the party?” she asked anxiously.

  “Party? oh, yes, we used to keep up that practice here, I believe, in the days when servants were two a penny,” he said idly, “but the custom died when the Castle children grew up and there were none left at Clooney.”

  “Well, now there’s Nonie, and I don’t mind betting that however much she scorns her own age-group, she’d get a kick out of being lady of the manor and handing out presents!”

  “You’re probably right at that, but would the other kids enjoy being patronised? The tenants don’t bob to the quality any longer, even in Ireland, and one must beware of charity.”

  “You’ve got things all mixed up, Duff,” she said. “Heaven knows, I’ve had enough of the sort of charity you mean, but real charity is never patronising. Do you think the orphans weren’t grateful for their tree and their presents and all the fun? We never thought for one moment we were being patronised, because everything was given freely and with love.”

  He put an arm round her shoulders with an involuntary gesture, drawing her to him, and said with gentleness:

  “Freely, and with love ... yes, that sums up all the best in life if we could learn to live by it, doesn’t it? You know, Harriet, sometimes you make me feel a little ashamed.”

  “I do? But why, Duff?”

  “You have so much to give, I think, and I—took what I wanted so lightly.”

  It was a strange admission, she thought, and one that she did not altogether understand.

  “You—you haven’t taken anything,” she said then, clinging to the literal interpretation of their bond, because she was unsure of his intention. “Are you regretting things, Duff? Because it doesn’t seem to me that I do much here to earn my keep. I don’t even run your house for you.”

  “Earn your keep? Is that how you think of our bargain?”

  “Well, of course, but so far, all the advantage seems to be mine. I will try to make friends with Nonie if she’ll let me, but you neither of you want the only thing I have to give, and you—you once told me that perhaps you—and Clooney—needed someone like me, but you don’t, do you? Anyone would have done at the time.”

  His fingers tightened with such, violence on her shoulders that she cried out, but the pressure did not ease.

  “Perhaps that’s what I meant when I said I’d taken what I wanted so lightly. But if I confuse you, Harriet, you equally confuse me—one minute an ignorant child, the next sending out curious vibrations that in any other girl would be taken for invitation. How am I to know where I stand?”

  She looked up at him mutely, tongue-tied because she did not know how to answer a question which her own simplicity might well have misinterpreted.

  “I don’t know the way,” she said, and indeed she did not. That Woman’s Intuition which the magazines and romantic novelists had so airily assured her was the unfailing guide in all such situations was either missing in her, or was not properly understood, she thought.

  “Don’t you, Harriet? Are you beginning to want a little more than bed and board and gratitude for small services rendered?” He still held her between his hands, and looking up into that dark, ugly face, she tried vainly to capture the right phrase with which to answer him.

  “I—I don’t understand you.”

  “No, you don’t, do you?” he said, and she thought there was a tinge of disappointment in his voice as he let her go. “Well, you shall have your tree and your children’s party, if that will make you happy, but don’t expect a kind of pantomime transformation scene as a result. I’ve a feeling you’re going to be disappointed.”

  “Oh, no!” she cried, relieved that they were back on territory that was familiar. “Half the fun is preparing, and would you—couldn’t you help me with the decorations and things? I know you think it’s all rather silly and unnecessary, but you’re so tall you could reach the places I couldn’t, and—well, it’s so much nicer to be part of something, and share, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, Harriet, I’ll help you—perhaps that will be a beginning,” he said, with a little smile.

  “A beginning?”

  “Yes, think it over. What was this thing you spoke of just now—the only thing you had to give, you said, that neither I nor my daughter wanted?”

  She felt herself colouring, but she was too simple to dissemble.

  “Affection—love perhaps,” she said, and his expression was suddenly a curious mixture of tenderness and surprise.

  “And did you think I had
no need of that? Everything given freely and with love, to use your own very revealing phrase,” he said, and bent his head as if to kiss her, but drew back when the three dogs burst into a sudden clamour of recognition or warning and a voice from the terrace shouted gaily:

  “Hi there! Am I a gatecrasher on the honeymoon, or can I stay for Christmas?”

  At first Harriet did not recognise the slim young man who vaulted over a stone bench to meet them, but Duff went forward to clap him on the shoulder with every sign of welcome, and she knew that it must be Rory Lonnegan.

  “You old sly-puss—getting yourself married all on the quiet and not even inviting me to the wedding!” Rory was saying. “Lead me to the blushing bride!”

  Harriet was indeed blushing as the two men came back to her, and she wondered how Duff proposed explaining his sudden marriage to a girl who had come over to Ireland on his cousin’s invitation, and was, to all intents and purposes, a stranger to him, but Duff was watching the meeting between them with a look of quizzical amusement on his ugly face, and it was clear that he was not at all disturbed.

  “Harriet, this is my cousin Rory,” he said with conventional gravity, then his eyes twinkled. “But I understand you’ve already met, so perhaps introductions are hardly necessary.”

  Harriet saw the young man’s start of surprise and the enquiring lift of an eyebrow very reminiscent of his cousin, but he advanced politely to shake hands with her.

  “I don’t think—” he began, then his handsome face lit up with an expression of astonished recognition.

  “Why, you can’t be—you surely can’t be my charming little pen-friend of a year or more ago! Well, what d’you know!”

  He took Harriet’s hand in his, kissed her on both cheeks which he declared was the right of a, cousin by marriage, and, flinging an arm about each of them, walked them back to the house.