Tyringham Park

by Rosemary McLoughlin

  A young man backed into her, turned around and said, “Sorry. Are you all right? Is there anything I can get you?” and when she said she was fine, thank you, just taking a rest, he turned back to his friends and she heard him whisper, “Who’s she? I’ve never seen her before.”

  By two o’clock Niamh had fallen asleep while sitting on the couch with Lochlann by her side. She had been revising until late the night before and had only managed to have a couple of hours’ sleep. She had wanted to stay awake as it would be her last night with Lochlann for some time. She and her parents were leaving for Africa the next day for a three-month tour to celebrate the completion of her degree.

  The wine wasn’t helping Charlotte’s equanimity. She was finding it difficult to keep her mind off the dark days that would follow this night.

  When someone vacated the place on Lochlann’s left side, she slid in quickly before anyone else had a chance to take it. Lochlann welcomed her and put his arm around her. He was already three parts inebriated and in the height of good humour. She looked over at Harcourt and caught his steely, disapproving look.

  By four in the morning she was the only person in the room who wasn’t asleep. Most students had left by then but there were about a dozen slumped on chairs or stretched out on the floor. She was glad that Harcourt’s suspicious gaze wasn’t trained on her as she shook Lochlann awake and, with difficulty, pulled him to his feet and, motioning that there was something in her room that needed attending to, guided his unsteady progress along the corridor.

  Just one hour with him, that’s all she asked. Niamh couldn’t begrudge her an hour when she was going to have him for the rest of his life. Just to lie beside him on the bed, not doing anything, not that he was in a fit state to do anything, moving in really close, putting her head into the hollow between his shoulder and head, and pretending, just for an hour, that he belonged to her. It wouldn’t hurt anyone, and no one need ever know. Lochlann, true to form, wouldn’t even remember, so what difference would it make to anyone?

  50

  Lochlann received a letter from the teaching hospital in Boston to say his application had arrived two days too late, making him ineligible for enrolment until the following year. There was no system for redress as all places had been filled.

  Damn. Damn and blast.

  Niamh had sent her application in on the same day, so she would have missed out as well.

  He should have learnt his lesson about the consequences of late applications the time he arrived back from a holiday in Italy. By a week he missed enrolling at Earlsfort Terrace where all his friends had gone, and had to settle for the Royal College where he knew nobody.

  What to do?

  He and Niamh had talked about working in Africa as volunteers with the Medical Missionaries and delaying their further training in Boston for a year. The nun they had spoken to about it said they couldn’t work in the same mission unless they were married, to prevent giving scandal to the pagans the Church was trying to convert. Seeing they intended to marry in a year’s time anyway, they didn’t see that as an obstacle. In fact, it gave the option an added appeal.

  They could take up that alternative now. In Niamh’s absence, knowing her as well as he did and assuming she would agree, Lochlann took it upon himself to inform the Mother Superior that they would travel to Africa and would be married before they left. He then wrote to Niamh telling her what he had done, sending the letter poste restante, hoping it wouldn’t arrive too late for her to collect it. He would like to have included a description of the erotic dream he’d had about her on the night of their final exams, but it was too intimate to commit to paper, so he only hinted at it and said he would describe it to her in detail when she returned. He had wanted to tell her about it the morning after the celebrations, but by the time he went to seek her out, she had left the townhouse and he hadn’t seen her since. How he’d ended up in Charlotte’s bed he had no idea, but presumed it was habit that had propelled him there when he needed to sleep. It was with relief he had seen he was alone in the bed when he awoke in the late morning.

  His arms felt superfluous without Niamh enclosed in them. Four more weeks until her return. Their wedding night couldn’t come soon enough as far as he was concerned.

  51

  “Her Ladyship sent me down to tell you that you are obliged to attend dinner tonight, Miss, poorly or not. Her exact words.”

  Charlotte retched into her handkerchief. Queenie picked up the basin beside the bed and held it under Charlotte’s chin. Charlotte heaved a few more times without producing anything, then sank back onto her pillows.

  “Can’t possibly. The thought of food makes me feel ill. Tell her that.”

  “I already did. She said if you don’t come, she’ll send out for a doctor, seeing as Harcourt isn’t here to have a look at you.”

  Charlotte wailed “I can’t let her do that!” and wept into her already sodden pillow.

  Lady Blackshaw had wanted to know every detail about Charlotte’s indisposition and Queenie, alarmed that Charlotte was set against seeing a doctor even though her condition hadn’t improved after three days, told Her Ladyship about the retching and the weeping, information she would normally keep to herself out of loyalty to Charlotte but was now relieved to pass on. Had any gentleman been calling on Charlotte? Lady Blackshaw wanted to know. Lord Peregrine was the only one, Queenie answered, but that was over a year ago. Was she sure he hadn’t called more recently? As sure as she could be, but then she wasn’t in attendance all the time so she couldn’t swear to the fact.

  Looking down at the prostrate figure on the bed, Queenie was glad she had passed the responsibility for Charlotte’s health on to Lady Blackshaw. Things were looking serious.

  Lord Waldron and Harcourt’s places at the dining-room table were vacant as they were spending the summer in Tyringham Park. Harcourt had left the day after the end-of-term party as he wanted to make the most of his last long holiday before beginning his internship in London.

  Charlotte sat opposite her mother, beside Aunt Verity. As soon as the soup was served, Charlotte put her handkerchief to her mouth, pushed back her chair and ran from the room.

  Charlotte yelped when she saw Harcourt standing beside her bed, and covered her face with her hands. “What are you doing here?”

  “Mother sent for me. She thinks you’ve disgraced yourself with Peregrine Poolstaff and wants me to find out. I don’t know why she couldn’t ask you straight out herself and save me the journey.” Harcourt slammed a chair beside the bed but didn’t sit on it. “Well, have you?”

  “No.”

  “That’s that, then. Wasted journey. Just as well, I might add. His wedding was in the Times last week. Quiet affair. Married his rich cousin. It’s a wonder you didn’t see it. His roof must have fallen in. Mother clearly doesn't know about the marriage and so got the wrong end of the stick.”

  Charlotte turned her face to the wall. “Not exactly. I have disgraced myself, Harcourt. I’m glad you came. You’re going to have to help me. What am I going to do? I don’t know what to do. I wish I were dead.”

  There was a heavy silence. Harcourt stared at his sister and said with venom, “If you’re telling me what I think you’re telling me, then I can only wish for the same thing.”

  Edwina’s initial mildness on hearing Harcourt’s report vanished when she heard that the man responsible for Charlotte’s condition was not a still-single Peregrine Poolstaff as she had assumed, but someone she had never heard of called Lochlann Carmody. The fact that he was Harcourt’s friend who had been coming to the townhouse for five years didn’t soften the antipathy she felt at the mere mention of a name that didn’t belong to anyone in her circle. She assumed Lochlann was a social climber from the peasantry with an eye on the Blackshaw fortune, that Charlotte had lost all sense of propriety in her desperation to be married and that the family would become a laughing stock when the facts became known. If the facts became known.

  A servant fr
om the townhouse delivered a note to Lochlann from Lady Blackshaw, requesting his presence at his earliest convenience.

  Despite Lochlann’s frequent visits to the townhouse over the years, he had rarely encountered Harcourt’s mother who generally confined herself to her apartments on the ground floor. He had often wondered at the fact that every member of the Blackshaw family lived a separate life and could avoid seeing every other member of the family from one end of the year to the next if they so wished, as evidenced by poor Charlotte’s bizarre three-year-long self-imposed internment. Reception rooms took up the whole of the second floor, Harcourt and Charlotte occupied half the third floor each and shared a corridor, Lord Waldron lived on the fourth floor when he was in residence, and the servants were either down in the basement or up in the attic. Now Lady Blackshaw had peremptorily summoned him, and he felt both puzzled and apprehensive.

  It all came clear to Charlotte. She would break ties with her family, travel to England with Queenie, take on a new identity, have the baby there, keep it and rear it, and never return to Ireland or have any contact with anyone here ever again. What a mistake it had been to tell Harcourt who by now would be informing their mother, who would then inform Lord Waldron!

  While she was waiting for her next wave of nausea to pass, Charlotte imagined what it would be like to be married to Lochlann. It would be a heavenly state, in which she need never fear abandonment again. Her mother had handed her over to Nurse Dixon, her father was never at home when he was needed, Miss East had chosen Catherine and Sid over her, Holly left the townhouse after Harcourt went to school even though she had been offered an alternative position in the house, Cormac opted to live in Paris and didn’t contact her for twelve years, and she never saw Manus. If Lochlann were legally tied to her for richer for poorer in sickness and in health until death did them part, all the hurt she had suffered in the past would be cancelled out. In the same way Cormac had done, Lochlann would enclose her in a warm orbit and keep away her nightmares.

  There was really no need to worry about Niamh. According to Harcourt, half the men in the year, including himself, were in love with her. She would soon find someone else. She had a large pool to choose from, whereas Charlotte, part of a dwindling number of aristocrats in the country, had so few. Niamh also had the advantage of having time on her side.

  A beautiful dream.

  Plenty of time to fantasise when she was miles away, living on her own. Charlotte picked up a pencil and started to make a list of what she needed to take with her to England. Not much. She could buy what she wanted there. It was some compensation to know she would never have to worry about money.

  52

  When Lochlann was shown into Lady Blackshaw’s presence after being summoned by her he was struck again by how much Harcourt looked like her, and how little Charlotte did.

  He felt the chill of her personality even from a distance.

  She didn’t greet him or call him by name before she accused him.

  Lochlann felt as if a cannonball, fired at his chest, had gone right through his body, taking all his vital organs with it, leaving a gaping hole.

  No recollection whatsoever of the action he was accused of came back to him. He had a vague memory of being in a bedroom sometime during the night after a deliciously erotic dream about Niamh, and it was only after waking later that he identified the room as Charlotte’s. Distaste at the thought of intimate relations with that lonely woman was his initial reaction, but what could he say in his defence? Everything that happened after eleven o’clock on the night of the party was either a blur, a dream or a blank.

  Harcourt brought the news that Lochlann had agreed to marry her so there was no need for any dramatic resolutions as the family honour had been saved. He looked at her as if he hated her.

  “That’s not what I wanted. You must know that.”

  “Don’t insult me by lying. Besides, you have no choice. It is all arranged.”

  “What if I refuse to marry?”

  “I don’t think that’s an option unless you want to spend the rest of your days locked up in a lunatic asylum. Mother has already threatened that and you know she’s not to be trifled with.” He backed out of the room. “You are not to receive anyone in case pressure is brought to bear on you, and you are not to leave the house. Mother’s orders. Now don’t expect me to speak to you ever again from this moment on.”

  Lochlann’s mother cried and prayed for three days, his father felt unmanned by not being able to save his only son from a life of certain misery, and his sister Iseult, from her perspective of twenty years, was revolted at the thought of her twenty-three-year-old brother marrying an old woman of thirty. His friends thought he was making a joke in poor taste when he told them he was going to marry Charlotte.

  “You’ve fallen for the oldest trick in the book,” one of them said bitterly, when Lochlann explained the circumstances. “Poor, innocent, sacrificial lamb.”

  Edwina needed a favour. Mr Kilmartin, the specialist who had looked after her since she had been transferred to Dublin after her accident, was the only person she could think of to ask. Would he find a position for her future son-in-law whose one desire all his life had been to travel to the outback of Australia and work there for a couple of years? The fares were to be a surprise gift from her – he was penniless – and the position would have to be arranged at once. Could Mr Kilmartin contact one of his many colleagues who had emigrated there (he had often referred to them) by cable – letters would be too slow at this late stage – and let her know?

  Mr Kilmartin said he would be only too delighted to help. He had never seen his brave, resigned patient look so vital and animated. She must think a lot of her future son-in-law. He was pleased to inform her within a fortnight that a friend of his had found advertised in a medical journal a small twenty-bed hospital serving a small town in the midst of a large area on the top of a plateau 400 miles from Sydney. At present it had no doctor, which wasn’t surprising, as it was an isolated, cold, rainy place, quite unlike the sunnier parts of the country that most people favoured.

  “That sounds ideal,” said Edwina, and asked if Mr Kilmartin would send a telegram to the hospital, accepting the post on behalf of Dr Lochlann Carmody.

  Edwina then bullied the local priest into officiating at a wedding ceremony three weeks hence, a speedy resolution by anyone’s reckoning. To ensure the contract would be legal and binding by Lochlann’s standards, she swallowed her prejudices and opted for a Catholic service. Let them try to get out of that one. Finally she booked two oneway tickets from Southampton on a cargo ship. By registering Lochlann as a doctor, she was not charged for the fares.

  Satisfaction all round. The Blackshaw name rescued, Charlotte off her hands. What did she care if Lochlann was a fortune-hunter and not of her class if the pair of them were living 12,000 miles away? She could tell everyone a baby had been born five months later than it had in reality and there would be no one in a position to contradict her.

  Lochlann didn’t try to contact Charlotte – seeing her on their wedding day would be too soon. Being married to her loomed like a sunless, bleak, never-ending winter. And there would he be, wearing neither shoes nor coat, standing on ice in a treeless landscape.

  If only Niamh could return from Africa so he could hold her in his arms one more time and have her press her dear hand against the wound in his chest so he could forget for a moment the nightmare that was sucking the spirit out of him and colouring his future in various shades of black.

  With relief, Charlotte changed her mind about escaping to England. She was too weak in her dehydrated state to undertake a journey, and besides, when one came to think of it, did one have any right to deprive a baby of its father or a man of his own flesh and blood?

  She thought not, and perhaps things might not turn out so badly. She could be the most generous benefactor as well as the best wife and mother in the country if she put her mind to it. Her fortune would enable Lochlann to study in th
e best hospitals in Europe and America if he so wished. In time he would be able to set up his own private clinic, enabling him to fund wonderful research that would change the face of medicine and, with her contacts, have no shortage of influential patrons and patients. It was even possible that one day he might bless the moment they met, and publicly acknowledge his good fortune in having married her.

  The fact that Niamh McCarthy's life might be destroyed by Lochlan's betrayal of her was something she wouldn't think about right now. Protecting her unborn child from the effects of dark and depressing thoughts must be her priority from now on.

  53

  Sydney

  1939

  Dixon placed her bunch of keys beside the copy of Middlemarch on her rosewood desk. Her office was behind Reception – through the glass panels she could keep her eye on activities in the foyer. Some guests were signing in, some leaving. She knew them all by name. Two more pairs of handmade shoes on account were being delivered to her. The head chef’s weekly projections were ready for her assessment. Five young girls were sitting outside her door waiting to be interviewed for the waitress vacancy.

  She walked from her office to the reception desk to look over the register. Guests and staff passing greeted her with deference, and those to whom she spoke the extra word felt honoured by being singled out. Now that she was past her prime, respect acted as a satisfactory substitute for admiration. If her fiancé had lived, she would be a lady of the manor by now, the story went. Just look at the size of those diamonds. She’d stayed true to his memory all those years, you have to give her credit for that – heroic and romantic at the same time. Worked hard. A good listener, a keeper of secrets. A real battler, and you can’t give higher praise than that.