Hungry Hill

by Daphne Du Maurier

  Gradually Jack Donovan took to being out when Johnnie came. His sister would bring a bottle of whisky from the cupboard, and a glass, and pour it out for him, saying the afternoon had a chill to it.

  Johnnie would watch her over the rim of his glass, amused by her pretence of shyness, which he knew very well was assumed, and then he would ask her to take down her hair, and after much shaking of her head and turning away from him she would do so. It would be quiet in the kitchen, with no sound but the ticking of the clock, and Johnnie, with the whisky inside him and Kate Donovan on his knee, would feel a pleasant lethargy steal over him, as he played with her long flaxen hair. How much more comfortable it was to be doing this than sitting all alone in the dining-room at home. Through half-closed eyes he would see the picture of the Pope on the wall opposite, with the rosary beneath, and the incongruity of what he saw compared to what was going on in the kitchen made the laughter rise within him, so that he would hasten to bury his face in Kate Donovan's hair and hide his amusement from her.

  Sometimes, back at Clonmere, he would suffer from reaction. It was really rather lamentable, he would think, to go up every few days to his own lodge and make love to his lodge-keeper's sister. Conversation with Kate was impossible, she had none; he went to see her for one purpose only. It was a way of passing the early autumn days of 1857.

  He would suffer from reaction most when he paid his occasional visits to his brother's house, East Grove, in Slane. A longing would come over him, that had neither rhyme nor reason, to see his brother's wife Katherine. As soon as he entered her house he would be aware of a sense of peace that he experienced nowhere else. She would come to him, across the drawing-room, and give him her hands, and say, "I am glad to see you, Johnnie. You are going to stay the night, of course," and would take no denial.

  Thomas would carry his bag to the spare room upstairs, and then tea would be brought, and he would sit beside Katherine while she poured it out, watching her hand on the tea-pot, the curve of her shoulder, the long, slim neck, the exquisite, calm profile.

  "What have you been doing with yourself, Johnnie?" she would ask, laying a hand on his knee and looking in his eyes, and he would be filled with sudden loathing for his life and everything he did. Loathing for his useless, hopeless days, the lying in bed in the mornings, the futile pretence of seeing Adams the agent, the sitting alone in front of the whisky bottle in the dining-room, the walking up to the gate-house and the sordid fumbling interlude with Kate. The return to Clonmere and the whisky bottle once again. He gazed round the drawing-room of East Grove. It was comfortable, kindly, with the fire in the grate and the polished brass fender. The carpet was a soft green, and the shining chintzes had apples in them. There were flowers on the table, flowers on the mantelpiece. Katherine had some work on her lap, for she was expecting a baby shortly, but this work she put away, because, she said, such domestic sights were not particularly interesting to the beholder.

  "I wish, Johnnie," she said, "you would leave Clonmere for a time and come and stay with us. I should love to have you here, and when Henry is out-wh he is very often-you would be a companion. I don't seem to see very much of my godson."

  "I should like it," said Johnnie, "more than anything."

  "Well, then?"

  He shook his head.

  "No," he said stubbornly, "two people who are happy, like you and Henry, don't want a third coming in to spoil the harmony."

  "Don't be foolish, Johnnie," she said.

  "It would only make us happier if we thought you were being happy too. It's lonely for you in that big house all alone, and although I am not going but and about much just at the moment, we could read together, and I would play to you, and Henry would love to have your company when he returned in the evening."

  Johnnie thought what it would mean to sit here, day after day with Katherine, in the peace and quiet of Katherine's house. Just to sit and watch her hands, folded as they were now, would be enough. Just to listen to her calm voice, and now and again to have her eyes smile at him, as she glanced up from the book she would be reading.

  Presently, when Thomas had removed the tea, Katherine went to the piano and played very softly.

  She seemed so remote, so detached from the world, as she sat there on her music-stool, looking away towards the window. What does she think of, Johnnie wondered. What goes through her mind?

  Does she give to Henry the peace she gives to me? He closed his eyes, and as he listened to her playing, Johnnie created the illusion for himself that this was his room, his house, and his wife who was sitting there at the piano, and that when she had finished she would come and bend over him, and touch his hair, and ask him if he was content. Then the door opened, and Henry came into the room, radiant, smiling.

  "Hullo, old fellow; this is a surprise," he said, and Johnnie rose from his chair, a guest in his brother's house, the dream shattered into foolishness.

  Katherine closed the piano and went at once to her husband. He kissed her, and stood talking to Johnnie with his arm about her.

  "How do you think she's looking?" asked Henry proudly, and without waiting for an answer he plunged into an account of his day, telling some amusing story about the civic luncheon he had been obliged to attend, where the honorable member for the city had made a tactless speech.

  "I suppose," said Katherine, "you smoothed the whole thing over, and invited all those who were offended back to dinner?"

  "I did nothing of the sort," said Henry. "I wished the affair well done with, so that I could get home to my wife."

  And once again he bent his head and kissed her, and Johnnie saw her look at his brother with an expression that brought a pain to his heart.

  "She loves him," he thought, "he makes her happy," and as he dressed for dinner, and heard them talking to one another in the room next to his, he thought suddenly of all the women he had never loved, who had made a momentary excitement and no more.

  What a dreary, worthless little procession they made through the years, ending now with Kate Donovan in the gate-house kitchen. Oh God, he thought wearily, if everything had been different, if I'd never gone into the regiment, never been through that blasted senseless war, but stayed here in the country, met Katherine and asked her to help me. Perhaps she would have married me instead of Henry. We would have lived together at Clonmere and she would have had my children, not his; and she would have looked at me in the way she looked at Henry ten minutes ago.

  There was a little pot of flowers on his dressing-table-she must have arranged them there before he came up to dress for dinner- and a book beside his bed, and a fire in the grate-signs of her care, her thoughtfulness-and there was a neatness and a comfort about the room so different from his own bleak bedroom at Clonmere.

  In the room next door he pictured Katherine sitting before her mirror, brushing her hair, while Henry wandered in, fastening his collar and tie, the intimacy between them a natural happy thing, making them closer to one another than before. It was something that he would never know, this sharing of life between a husband and wife. The only memories he had were sordid, grey…

  Dinner at East Grove was at seven o'clock. The candles were lit on the polished table. A parlour-maid helped Thomas hand the plates. And Johnnie, seated beside Katherine, compared her ways and his brother's once more to his own, when, sprawling alone in his dining-room, he would be faced sometimes by a stained cloth and tepid food, and after cursing the servant until the man was white with fear, he would decide not to eat at all, and stretch out his hand to the decanter instead.

  When Katherine had risen and left the brothers together, Henry glanced across at him, with a curious half-shy expression, and said: "I suppose you would not care to make me your agent, would you, Johnnie?"

  "Why, what's the matter with Adams?" said Johnnie.

  "I don't mean you should dismiss Adams," replied Henry, "but allow me to act as-well, as overseer, for want of a better expression. You're letting the place go rather to pieces,
you know, old boy, and it seems such a pity, when I think of all the care and trouble and expense put upon it by grandfather.

  Don't be annoyed with me for saying this. I've wanted to speak to you about it for some time."

  Johnnie flushed, and stuck out his jaw.

  "I don't know what you're talking about," he said. "The place is run in the way I like it to be run, and that's all there is to it. As a matter of fact I think very little of Adams, and I shall no doubt be my own agent in future. You would probably find it more trouble than profit."

  "All right," said Henry swiftly. "We'll say no more about it. I only suggested it, as I thought it might help, and take some of the business off your shoulders. Been up to the mines lately?"

  "I have not," said Johnnie, lighting his cigar.

  "There is nothing to go to the mines for. The only interest to me is to see what gets paid into my account at the bank. Why do you ask?"

  "No reason. Only that I believe it encourages the fellows employed there if they feel the owner takes a bit of interest, and enquires after their welfare, and the work too, now and again."

  "Any other advice?" asked Johnnie.

  Henry pushed the decanter towards him.

  "Only to go a bit slow on this, old fellow," he said, "and see rather less of the Donovan family."

  Johnnie laid down his cigar.

  "Who the hell's been talking to you about the Donovans?" he said.

  "You know what this country is like for gossip," said Henry. "What goes on in Doonhaven is all over Slane in a couple of days. Jack Donovan isn't much of a chap, you know. He has a bad record for poaching and pilfering generally. And he's been heard boasting in the public-houses here that his sister has you by the ears, though he didn't use quite such a polite expression."

  "God damn everyone," shouted Johnnie. "Why the hell can't people leave me alone?"

  "They would leave you alone," said Henry, "if you would leave the whisky alone."

  Johnnie leant back in his chair and stared at his brother.

  "It's damned easy for you to talk, isn't it?" he said. "You are happy I and married to the woman you love. There's precious little for you to worry about.

  You have your Katherine. Let me enjoy my Kate."

  He laughed, and poured himself another glass of port.

  "I'm sick and tired of people telling me what to do," he said. "I suffered from it in the army, and I'm not going to stand it in civil life."

  "I'm not trying to preach at you," said Henry quietly. "I'm only telling you to beware of Jack Donovan. If you choose to have an affair with his sister I can't stop you. But do keep your head."

  "The Donovans are my friends," said Johnnie.

  "They're the only people in this country who have showed any friendliness to me since I came back to it."

  "Very well," said Henry. "I won't say any more. Let us go into the drawing-room and ask Katherine to give us some music."

  Yes, it was easy enough for him, thought Johnnie, watching his brother turn the pages for Katherine at the piano, while she looked up at him and smiled.

  Tonight they will be together, she with her head on his shoulder, and tomorrow he will wake, and Katherine will be beside him. And the next day and the next. When he is irritable she will soothe him. When he is tired she will rest him. When he is gay she will join in his gaiety, and when he is solemn she will be solemn too. They belong to each other, she is going to have his baby. And I belong to nothing and to no one; I'm nothing but a useless, ill-tempered drunkard, whose only amusement in life is to make love to my lodge-keeper's sister.

  "Johnnie," said Katherine suddenly, looking up from her music, and smiling across at him, "you are going to stay a little while with us, are you not?"

  And Henry, with his hand on her shoulder, glanced at him too.

  "Yes, Johnnie, I wish you would. I'm out a great deal, and I should like to think of you here with Katherine. I know you would be happy. I know she would look after you."

  Johnnie watched them, Katherine at the piano with the lamp-light shining on her smooth dark hair, and Henry his brother, playing half-consciously with the lace on Katherine's collar. The little gesture, familiar, intimate, broke into Johnnie's dream.

  "No," he said, "no, I shall leave you both in peace and go back to Clonmere."

  When Johnnie returned home one of the first things he did was to dismiss his agent Adams, telling him that in future he would look after the estate himself. This would show Henry, and anyone else who chose to criticise him, that he was not so incompetent as they liked to believe. For a month or so he rose earlier in the morning, answered his letters, walked or rode round Clonmere, and even went up to the mines once or twice a week. Then he had the misfortune to catch a chill and be laid up for several days, and as he lay alone in his dreary bedroom, with only his manservant to minister to him, depression once more came upon him, and his energy of the past few weeks seemed futile and absurd.

  What good did he achieve, after all, by riding up to Hungry Hill and sitting in the counting-house?

  He merely wasted Griffiths' time. During the hour he would spend in the place, the manager would be fretting to be gone. And it would be the same about the estate. He was certain his tenants disliked him.

  No one gave him a welcome, except the Donovans. And by God, he thought to himself, tossing on his bed, they are my only friends; no one else cares one ha'porth about me. I could lie here and die before anyone came to see me. His godfather, Doctor Armstrong, looked in upon him one morning, and read him a lecture on self-indulgence.

  "You've only yourself to blame for the condition you are in," he said, without an ounce of sympathy, and sat for fully twenty minutes declaiming the evils of alcohol. Then he departed, and Johnnie, feeling rather worse towards evening, bade his man bring up a bottle of port from the cellar, after which he was sufficiently recovered to put on a dressing-gown and eat cold bacon and potatoes by the fire in the dining-room, where Jack Donovan, full of sympathy, sat with him to bear him company.

  "Here's Kate been fretting herself sick for the sight of you these past few days," he said, "and nothing would content her but that I should come up myself to the castle to see the Captain. How do you feel, then?"

  "Like hell," said Johnnie.

  "It's lying here by yourself that does it, Captain.

  As for physic, the man has yet to be born that drew any strength from the stuff. It's what you have there in the bottle that will do you most good."

  "That's the way I like to be spoken to, Jack.

  By heaven, you're the only friend I have."

  "True for you, sir. It's what Kate was saying to me only this morning: the Captain's fine friends and relatives would let him die before they gave him a thought. I tell you what it is, sir, you have too much spirit for them, that's the trouble. You like to go your own way, and why shouldn't you? Here's that dirty fellow Adams going round saying you don't know one end of your property from the other. I'd scalp the brute."

  "Oh, he says that, does he?"

  "Sure, 'tis out of spite because you took the agency out of his hands. I can tell you one thing, Captain, and that is I'll give you a hand any day with the property, when you haven't the mind to be bothering with the place."

  "That's very good of you, Jack."

  "Ah, don't mention it. No trouble at all.

  I dare say I can squeeze more out of the place for you than Adams. What do you say to Kate coming round and straightening things up for you here in the house?"

  "I'd be very obliged if she would," yawned Johnnie. "None of my servants here flicks a duster in the rooms from one day to the next."

  The port was taking effect, it was making him sleepy, and satisfied, which the medicine of his old fool of a godfather would never have done, and it was pleasant, thought Johnnie later, lying in his bed once more, with a fire lit in the grate, to see Kate moving noiselessly about the room, drawing the curtains and shutting out the grey November afternoon, folding his clothes and
putting them away, and afterwards, when he was practically asleep, creeping to his side and lying down on the bed beside him. He thought of East Grove, and his brother and Katherine sitting down now to their tea in the drawing-room, and later Katherine playing the piano, and Henry sitting back in his chair, turning it so that he could watch the lamp-light on his wife's hair.

  "He has his Katherine," thought Johnnie, "I have my Kate. What the hell do I care?"

  And pulling Jack Donovan's sister close to him, he sought oblivion, while the rain began to patter again on the closed window and the darkness fell.

  It was easy, as the winter passed, to rely more and more upon the company of the Donovans. Jack had a shrewd, rather cunning business head upon him, and in less than no time, Johnnie noticed, he had the affairs of Clonmere at his finger-tips. He dealt with the tenants, he paid the wages, he took upon his shoulders all that his master could not be bothered to do.

  "I don't know how I'd manage without you now, Jack," Johnnie would say to him. "You save me all the work that bores me stiff, and I don't have to worry any more whether the fellows dislike me or not."

  "Dislike you?" said Jack Donovan. "Why, Captain, you're the best-liked gentleman that's ever borne the name of Brodrick. Aren't there men and women down in Doonhaven that speak to you who never spoke to your brother, or your grandfather? Even Father Healey himself said to Kate the other day, "The Captain is a credit to the country."

  It was indeed rather remarkable, thought Johnnie, that the priest of the district, who to the best of his belief had never in his grandfather's time had as much as a nod from any member of the family, far less entered inside the park, should now smile and bow to the present owner of Clonmere, and even take tea with him in the stuffy kitchen of the gate-house. He was really, Johnnie decided, quite a good sort of fellow, and he found himself fumbling for five pounds to give to the priest for distribution among the poorest families in the district.

  "Never before," said Father Healey, counting the coins carefully, and putting them away in a shabby leather purse, "never before has a Brodrick given a thought to any of the poor stricken members of my flock. And there's my church, with the roof soon to fall in, and how am I to find the money to repair it?"