Tyringham Park

by Rosemary McLoughlin

  “The Club’s not what it used to be. They’re letting all sorts of riffraff join these days.”

  “I was trying to remember how many hospitals there are in the Dublin area,” said Charlotte, making an attempt to bring Lochlann into the conversation. “Lochlann was the only doctor within a forty-mile radius of the hospital he was in charge of.”

  “So you said in your letters,” said Edwina. “Will you be able to make up a fourth for bridge this afternoon, Vee? Tilly claims her cold has gone to her chest.”

  “I’ll check my diary after lunch to see if I’m free. Did you see any snakes while you were away, Dr Carmody? I’ve always been fascinated by poisonous snakes, even though I’ve never seen one.”

  “I saw a couple,” said Lochlann. “One was –”

  “I’ll take Thatcher with me in case my palpitations return,” said Waldron. “He can wait outside while I check who’s there.”

  “One of Lochlann’s patients, a young motherless boy, was brought in already dead from snake bite,” Charlotte said, hoping to hand over the telling of the story to Lochlann.

  Waldron wasn’t listening. “Last time I recognised fewer than a quarter of the members.”

  “Tilly probably has nothing more than a sniffle,” said Edwina. “She’s a frightful hypochondriac.”

  Verity said in a tone that sounded deliberately mischievous, “Just think, we now have an Australian Catholic in the family for the first time in four hundred years. Two novelties in the one child.”

  Charlotte and Lochlann looked up at the same moment but their eyes didn’t meet.

  “It’s of no consequence what she is, seeing she can’t inherit,” Waldron pronounced.

  “What do you mean, can’t inherit?” Edwina shot back. “If Harcourt doesn’t return, she will automatically become the heir – heiress – after Charlotte. There’s no reason why she couldn’t change her name to Blackshaw.”

  Charlotte didn’t dare look at Lochlann.

  “That shows you how little you know about the law, which a bit of name-changing won’t alter. Charlotte’s daughter can never inherit, and you know that as well as I do.”

  “That was British law. Why should that apply now that we’re a Free State?”

  “It still applies. If Harcourt doesn’t survive, the land and title will go to my brother Charles after I die, and if he predeceases me, to his eldest son. That’s Giles’s father,” he explained to Lochlann. “My brother was only in his twenties when he married.” He turned back to Edwina and his voice took on an irritable tone. “If Charlotte’s daughter wants to live at the Park, she’ll have to marry her cousin like you did and change her name, which you didn’t have to do. That’s the only way she can become a real Blackshaw.”

  Charlotte addressed the tablecloth. “Can we talk about this another time? It’s hardly a matter of urgency.”

  Waldron turned to address her. “You’re right, it’s not, but your mother won’t let it rest. You know why she champions the female line, don’t you? To spite Charles and Harriet who are too popular and successful, that’s why. Their children and grandchildren keep winning prizes at the Horse Show and point-to-points around the country whereas Harcourt never won one. How anyone could expect him to when he was city reared is beyond me.”

  “That’s not the reason,” said Verity. “It’s the unfairness that galls her.”

  “I can speak for myself, Vee. Charles gave Harcourt inferior mounts to ride. That’s why he never won prizes. It rankles to this day. He had more natural ability than Giles, and Charles couldn’t stomach it.”

  “As if Charles would be so petty or devious!” scoffed Waldron. “It was the city rearing that handicapped Harcourt, not my brother, and besides, no amount of allegations against Charles, false or otherwise, has anything to do with the case in hand. Private grievances aside, male primogeniture must prevail. It’s the only system that makes sense. Where would the Blackshaw name and the House of Lords and the British Empire be without it? Answer me that.”

  “Certainly not as powerful as they are today,” Verity chimed in.

  “Exactly. It’s the only way to keep power and wealth in the hands of those bred to wield it, preventing catastrophes like some female marrying a nobody without a fortune . . .”

  Charlotte looked studiously at her plate, but could see that Lochlann had stopped eating.

  “. . . and him squandering the lot in the space of one generation!”

  They’ve had this argument before, Charlotte realised. Verity is prompting Waldron so that he will repeat it in front of us.

  “Anyway, I’m not dead yet and Harcourt isn’t dead yet, and the Park isn’t what it used to be with all the acreage sold off. Still, there’s plenty for Charlotte besides the Park thanks to the foresight of my forefathers.” He refilled his glass.

  Lochlann quietly replaced his knife and fork.

  “That’s a good one – ‘the foresight of my forefathers’!” said Waldron. “It’s almost poetry. Here’s to the townhouse, the West Indies, Kensington and the City!” He raised his glass. “Thanks to my forefathers – note, not my foremothers – jolly smart chaps that they were!”

  Lochlann pushed back his chair and stood up. All heads turned towards him and they waited for him to raise his glass.

  “Excuse me,” said Lochlann, leaving his glass on the table. “Seeing this is a private family matter I won’t intrude any longer. I’ll take the opportunity to call over to my parents’ house to see my own family.”

  “I’ll come with you,” said Charlotte, already half out of her seat. They’d agreed earlier they would make their first visit to the Carmodys together. “I won’t wait for trifle.”

  “No, stay where you are. There’ll be plenty of time after you’ve contributed to this important issue.” He gave her no sign of solidarity or any hint of a smile to soften the sarcastic tone – the first time she had heard him use it – before he left the room.

  Smarting from Lochlann’s rebuff, she had to be addressed three times before she noticed Queenie standing beside her.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” the servant said. “The baby needs to be fed.”

  Edwina waved her hand as if to shoo her off. “You know I don’t tolerate interruptions at mealtimes. You and Cook deal with it.”

  “They can’t very well,” said Charlotte, leaving the table.

  When Lochlann hadn’t returned after two hours, Charlotte saw no reason why she shouldn’t make her own way around to see the Carmodys and be the one to revel in their admiration of Mary Anne and, by association, herself. She could imagine them now, talking, drinking and laughing in celebration, while Lochlann and his sister Iseult teased each other about the comparative excellence of his daughter and her son, Matthew, born two months before Mary Anne.

  She asked Queenie to fetch Harcourt’s old pram. “You and I are taking Mary Anne for a walk,” she told the delighted servant.

  “It’s already scrubbed and waiting,” said Queenie, rushing off.

  When she returned with it, Charlotte nearly let the baby slip out of her arms.

  The first thing she saw was the tartan quilt, and then the scratched acorn emblem half worn away. Queenie wasn’t to know – she’d never been to the Park – that it was the one in which Victoria had been sleeping before she disappeared.

  “This isn’t Harcourt’s,” said Charlotte with difficulty, keeping her voice calm. “Why is it here?”

  “Someone left Harcourt’s out in the weather behind the potting shed for years and it rotted and rusted away. Her Ladyship asked for this one to be sent up from the Park last week to be ready for you.”

  Charlotte, weak with anger, slumped onto a chair. How unfortunate that her parents’ distaste for ‘new’ money and their reluctance to spend old money coincided with their convenient preference for shabbiness.

  “Take it away,” she ordered the concerned Queenie. “Dr Carmody will buy a new one tomorrow. We’ll put off the walk until then. I’ll have a rest with M
ary Anne instead.”

  She held herself in check until Queenie wheeled the offending article out of her sight.

  Charlotte’s mother-in-law Dr Grace Carmody rang at eight that evening to welcome her home and to say how sorry they were she hadn’t come over with Lochlann. They were impatient to see her and little Mary Anne, but she understood from Lochlann that urgent family business had prevented her from accompanying him. There was no trace of irony in her voice. Please God they would see her and Mary Anne tomorrow.

  Why is Lochlann allowing his mother to make this call? Charlotte asked herself, a familiar feeling of rejection swamping her.

  “Unfortunately, dear, Lochlann overdid it and has fallen asleep in his old room. He was so excited at being home he lost the run of himself. Doesn’t seem to be any point in disturbing him. He was so jaded from the trip that we probably wouldn’t be able to wake him, anyway, and you know what he’s like after a few drinks.”

  No irony there, either. “It would be a lot less trouble to leave him where he is and let him sleep through until the morning. I didn’t want you to be worrying.”

  Charlotte thanked her and said she would bring Mary Anne over to No 7 as soon as Lochlann returned to accompany them. She hung up the phone with a dejected heart. What she had feared was already happening on their first day back – Lochlann’s old life coming to claim him, leaving her out in the cold. Tomorrow it would be his best friend Pearse, then other school friends, then college friends, and then more relations. She thought of their little wooden house in Redmundo where she’d had him all to herself for most of the time, and wished they hadn’t left it.

  70

  The trip to Tyringham Park that Charlotte had set her heart on had to be ruled out, as Lochlann received his posting within the week.

  She was already planning their long-term future there, picturing Mary Anne under Manus’s tutelage, Lochlann safely back from the war, practising as a country doctor, newly converted to country pursuits, herself painting in between hunts, and Miss East in her old age being treated like a queen to make up for all the years she hadn’t gone to see her.

  It saddened Charlotte to see the suppressed excitement in Lochlann’s bearing on the day he was due to leave to join the Medical Corps in the British Army. She tried not to read too much into it. The male love of adventure was the least hurtful interpretation she could put on it, the most his wish to find Niamh – perhaps she had left the Ugandan mission by now to join the war effort.

  “I’d like a photograph of you with Mary Anne,” Charlotte said minutes before he was to leave. The words ‘Just in case’ were suspended between them. “Where did you put the Brownie? I’ll go and get it.”

  “No, I will. I know exactly where to lay my hands on it.”

  Bloody hell. He had forgotten to deal with it.

  Charlotte, with Mary Anne in her arms, followed him into the bedroom. The camera was in his unpacked trunk with all the unsorted letters, souvenirs and documents he had brought with him from Australia. Only four photographs had been taken on the last reel, which featured the Hogan family with Alison Hogan, Mary Anne’s twin, in the foreground.

  He delved into the trunk and pulled out the camera. “Right . . . here it is . . . let’s see . . .” He pretended to examine the camera, then glanced up and smiled at the baby. “Look at the birds, Mary Anne,” he said, pointing out the window. “They’re chirping just for you.”

  “She might be a genius, but I don’t think she understood what you said,” Charlotte laughed, taking the child to the window and supplying a few bird noises of her own.

  Lochlann turned away, quickly rewound the film, took it out of the camera, slipped it into his breast pocket and, glad to discover a distraction there, pulled out a folded page.

  “Dr Merton’s two friendly Englishwomen running a Sydney hotel,” he said, handing it to her. “Do you want to read about them?”

  “Not really. What’s the point? It’s not as if we’ll be going back.”

  “True enough.” He flicked the page into the trunk. “A pity but there’s no film in the camera. I’ll have to rely on you to take snaps of Mary Anne and send them to me so I can follow her progress.”

  Lochlann was tender when he kissed Mary Anne goodbye, and brotherly when he enclosed Charlotte in a hug and told her to mind herself and take good care of the little one.

  On the mail boat crossing the Irish Sea Lochlann summoned up, he hoped for the last time, the three little faces that kept haunting him. He had tried to leave them behind in Australia, but they had embedded themselves in his brain and followed him across the seas. Did Nell Hogan ever allow herself to acknowledge, as she tended Alison during winter nights or took her around with her while she milked cows and fed poddy calves, that it was fortunate that Dolores hadn’t lived, as she was finding it so difficult to cope as it was? And when child number nine and number ten came along would she be relieved Dolores had saved herself and Dan the worry of having an extra mouth to feed and the problem of finding money for boarding-school fees when the girl reached the age of twelve and had to leave her isolated one-teacher bush school if she wanted a secondary education and didn’t win a bursary?

  Three little newborns in three little cribs. Two alive, one dead. Could he hope for forgiveness because what he did wasn’t premeditated? Because his hands had frozen before they moved to lift up the live child so that he wouldn’t have to witness Charlotte’s stricken face for the second time?

  No.

  Would he do it again under the same circumstances?

  Yes, he would.

  So there was no hope for him, for not only was he a sinner, but an unrepentant sinner at that.

  Now he had been given the opportunity to make some kind of amends and he intended to use it. Giving no thought to his own welfare, he would court danger, work himself into exhaustion and be brave to the point of foolhardiness in an effort to dislodge those tiny little faces from his brain.

  71

  Dublin

  1943

  How could she have known how easy it was to love and care for a child? Why had no one told her how all-consuming and satisfying tending to a child could be? Charlotte had feared she would be as cold and distant as Edwina, as resentful and cruel as Dixon. Where was the exasperation, the grimness, the nastiness, the screaming, the beatings? At what age did the child have to be before one turned on it, to frighten it and break its heart and spirit?

  Every once in a while she thought of Mrs Hogan in Redmundo in Australia with her seven or eight children and she wondered how she was able to cope with all of them, as well as run the household and the dairy, while with only one child she found her day overcrowded.

  As she tended to Mary Anne’s needs with gentleness and delight, she often had memory flashes of the way Dixon used to drag a comb through her knotted hair, snapping her neck, and then calling her ‘Cry baby’ when it brought tears to her eyes. Bath time was a particular dread. When Victoria was old enough the two children were put in an almost cold bath together. Dixon would roughly lather their faces and hair and when Victoria cried out because of her stinging eyes, Dixon would slap her and leave a handprint on her wet, naked skin. The rinsing off was the worst – a bucket of cold water was thrown on both of them and Dixon took her time drying them with towels that were small and threadbare and gave no warmth or comfort. Charlotte dressed herself, but Victoria had to subject herself to Dixon’s rough handling – arms twisted to fit into armholes, chin snapped as a jumper with a too-tight neck was tugged over her head, nails dug into her scalp as Dixon dried her hair.

  Charlotte often thought of the shivering Victoria as she wrapped Mary Anne in a warm towel after her bath and cuddled her close, in front of the coal fire.

  News of Harcourt’s death came as a shock. So much time had elapsed since his wounding that the family in the townhouse had grown confident he was recovering. Harcourt’s superior, Colonel Turncastle, who had been a subordinate of Waldron’s in India, made a detour in his
recruiting trip a fortnight later to sympathise with his old commander.

  Harcourt hadn’t died from his original wounds, the colonel told the assembled family. The young doctor, not properly healed himself, volunteered to travel to France to bring back a valuable Special Operations Executive agent who had been captured, severely tortured, and left for dead. Because of the presence of three ladies in the room, the colonel gave only the bare outline of the facts. He would fill in the details for Waldron later if the old soldier indicated that he wanted to hear them.

  Harcourt tended to the agent until he judged him well enough to be flown back to England without a doctor to accompany him, then he stayed on and became caught up in one of the projects the agent was working on at the time. He assisted a Resistance explosives expert in blowing up a bridge at the exact moment a trainload of German soldiers was crossing it. Over a hundred perished. The Germans put a price on the head of the perpetrators. Harcourt and fifteen Resistance members were betrayed, rounded up and shot.

  “So you can see why I wanted to travel over to tell you myself. ‘Killed in action’ would give you no indication of the extent of Harcourt’s bravery.”

  The colonel stayed for dinner and during the course of it outlined a new development in the war. While he was talking, Charlotte had the feeling he was appealing directly to her.

  The authorities had decided to recruit women agents in the field in France, he explained, holding her gaze, because so many male agents had been lost to capture or death. Each agent had to work alone: no uniform, no back-up, and no protection under the Geneva Convention. If caught, agents were regarded as spies who could be eliminated, rather than prisoners of war. Those were the rules, or lack of them, under which Harcourt had been executed.

  Double agents were the biggest danger. It was suspected one of those had been responsible for betraying Harcourt. So many Special Operations Executive agents had recently disappeared within their first week of arrival, it was assumed there was at least one who was privy to the secret workings of the organisation. If the Germans seized a wireless they could torture passwords and codes out of the agent and, using that same wireless, send misleading information back to Britain.