The Lady

by Anne McCaffrey

  “That’s a possibility, isn’t it?” Michael said wearily.

  “Give me the shotgun, Captain, and I’ll just sleep in the hay barn tonight with Tory. Just in case.”

  “I’d appreciate it, Mick.”

  The old groom nodded, then stepped back so Michael could park the Austin. Wearily, Michael made his way upstairs to bed, too tired even to reflect upon all that had happened since morning. He fell asleep instantly but woke several times during the night, unaccountably disturbed.

  28

  “THERE isn’t a horse in the field with a tail, Captain, sor,” Barry announced the next morning, cap crushed between nervous hands. “There’s tail hair all over the paddocks, sor. Great wads of it.”

  Everyone raced out of the kitchen and down to the fields. Only the foals had been spared. Swearing profusely under his breath, Michael ordered Mick and Artie to check the brood mares and the young horses for injury. Everyone pitched in to help, while Catriona, stunned by the vandalism, began to gather up the shorn horse tails. Most had been cut off in hanks.

  To Michael’s great relief, the horses had suffered no real damage, though some of the younger stock were skittish about being approached. There was something to be said against constantly handling young stock, Michael thought bitterly. He’d hear about this from Jack Garden, who tended to let his run wild in the fields.

  “Fitzroy!” Owen stated furiously. “He’s got five sons, enough to make it a quick night’s work.”

  “Jesus, I’ll get the fucker,” Mick said.

  Michael knew he should say something, but he was so consumed with anger at such wanton disfigurement that he couldn’t trust himself to speak. Then he saw the forlorn, anguished expression on Catriona’s face as she clutched her armful of horse tail hair.

  “Trina . . . ” he began, trying to find some way to comfort his daughter.

  “Yeah, Cat! Boy, that’s using your head,” Patricia said, rushing up to her cousin and fingering the wads of horse hair. “Gee, at least they cut it long. It’ll work in easy.”

  “What are you babbling about, Patricia?” Michael demanded.

  “Making false tails, Unk. We just braid ’em on. They even left enough hair on the docks to sew on to.”

  “Braid it on? Sew it?”

  “Well, you sure as hell couldn’t show Frolic without a tail, could you? She’d look ridiculous with just that scut left.” Patricia giggled. “But with hair this long, we just braid it on the dock and sew it tight to what’s left. No big deal. There isn’t a Standard Bred that isn’t shown with a false tail. Wait, you’ll see. You won’t be able to tell she’d been shorn. That’ll show Fitzroy!”

  Michael’s face began to brighten as he recognized the possibilities in Patricia’s suggestion. To everyone’s astonishment, he even began to chuckle. At first Catriona was confused, but as she saw the others begin to look less grim, she, too, felt better.

  “Good old American know-how,” Michael said. Pulling Patricia to his side, he gave her a fond embrace and ruffled her hair. “All right, then, Artie, you help Pat gather up tail hair and bring it back to the yard. C’mon, Trina. The day is saved!” He gathered Catriona to his other side and gave her a reassuring squeeze. “A nuisance, no more or less, and exactly what one could expect from Fitzroy. It’ll take more than that to stop Cornanagh.” He gave her a bright smile. “Good thing the show horses are all stabled. None of them were shorn, were they, Mick?”

  His question startled Mick, who had been stamping along behind, a furious grimace on his weatherbeaten face. “No, not a one of them was touched. Iffen he had . . . ” Mick’s right hand closed into an aggressive fist. “Goddamn culchie!”

  Eventually, Michael marched everyone back into the kitchen, insisting they return to their breakfasts. At table, Bridie was both sour and smug, darting fierce looks at everyone. Her attitude sent Catriona into a deeper depression.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Pat asked when Bridie had left.

  “I don’t see why the horses have to be hurt if God is punishing Owen.”

  Michael put down knife and fork and stared in total amazement at his daughter. “God in heaven, Catriona, where on earth did you get that idea?”

  “Bridie said it was retribution,” Catriona said, her chin quivering.

  Michael reached across the table and gave Catriona’s forearm a little shake to make her look at him. “Catriona, thinking that God punishes you, me, Owen, anyone, is just superstition. And Bridie is full of it.”

  “She’s full of something else, too,” Patricia muttered. Michael shot the girl a stern look.

  “I will not have my daughter thinking so about such things. The horses’ tails were cropped because Fitzroy is a vindictive man and chooses to believe that Owen is responsible for Cathleen’s pregnancy. He did it out of spite. Surely you can’t believe he’s an instrument of God, can you?” He tried to coax a smile from her and gave her arm another squeeze when she avoided his glance. “Catriona Mary Virginia, God is not spiteful. Nor did He send this act of vandalism on Cornanagh as discipline for what we have or have not done. To think so is to pull God down to Fitzroy’s level. Don’t you agree?”

  Catriona glanced anxiously up at him, her blue eyes revealing her inner anguish.

  “Kitten, ignore Bridie’s superstitious prating and . . . ” He hesitated. “And your mother’s obsession with prayer and divine retribution. It is not God who is responsible for what happens to us, but ourselves, since He gave us the free will to make our own choices. If you make a bad choice, things go wrong. But you’re responsible for that choice, not God. Let’s be big enough to admit that we’re responsible for the bad as well as the good things that happen to us.” He could see the muscles in her jaw relaxing. “And there is little question in my mind that Fitzroy and his sons are responsible for cutting the tails. But you, Catriona Mary Virginia Carradyne, are not guilty in any way, shape, or form for their sins. Right?”

  Catriona gave him a wan smile and a tremulous sigh before she pushed back her chair and took her plate to the sink. Michael regarded her soberly, hoping she’d take his brief sermon to heart. He hated to see the child accepting the grim doctrine her mother had embraced. He had never felt comfortable with the guilt and repentance aspects of Church dogma. “God’s will” had always struck him as an easy way out of taking responsibility for one’s own actions. “God’s will” had been Isabel’s excuse for avoiding a candid look at the results of her choices, good or bad. And one way or another he would make certain Catriona did not grow up to do the same.

  Just as he was returning to the yard, the phone rang. It was Philip calling from Crawford’s to say that there hadn’t been so much as a mouse squeak all night. Michael thanked him for a job well done and rang off without mentioning the shorn tails; there’d be time for that later.

  When he reached the garage Patricia and Catriona were already at work, sorting hanks to make a tail for Frolic. Catriona seemed absorbed in the task.

  “It’s no fun being burgled, Cat,” Patricia was saying. “It’s scary at first, and then you get mad that someone had the unmitigated gall to rob you of your things. Getting mad’s the first step to a cure.”

  “Good God, Pat, was your house robbed?” Michael asked.

  “Yeah,” she said sourly, “the house got stripped two years ago while we were on vacation.” She shrugged. “But Dad’s insurance covered everything. Everything except my Beatles collection. They didn’t consider that valuable!” Pat was plainly disgusted by such prejudice. “Here’s a better piece, Cat. Use this.”

  “Can we get something of a tail on her today, Pat?” Catriona wanted to know. “The flies are wicked mean, and she’s nothing to switch with.”

  “We’ll give it a good ol’ Yankee try,” Pat assured her, and winked at her uncle. “Now, what we need is some of that thread you sew plaits with, and a big needle, and—”

  “In the tack room,” Catriona said, and ran off.

  When Michael got int
o the yard, he realized that Mick and Artie were taking the vandalism even more to heart. They were mucking out as if every fork of manure were a Fitzroy. He considered warning Mick about retaliation. Perhaps he should present the matter to Sergeant Quinn at the Newtownmountkennedy Gardái Station; he wanted no more incidents. What he really needed to do, he thought darkly, was find out who was to blame for Cathleen’s condition.

  “It’s bloody good, Cat,” Patricia said, “and that’s the Tulip to a T!” The girls had worked in special harmony all morning and after the noon meal Catriona had pulled out the sketch to show her cousin. “I think you’ve even got Unk right,” Pat continued, “though there is something a bit funny with his shoulder here.”

  “It’s just the angle he’s standing at,” Catriona replied defensively.

  “Doesn’t matter. I don’t think anyone’s going to notice him. It’s the Tulip you’ve got right. Gee, he was a great horse! Your dad must miss him horribly.”

  “He does,” Catriona said softly. “Sybil’s collecting it today to get it framed for me for Dad’s birthday.”

  “When’s that?”

  “Just before the horse show, July twenty-sixth.”

  “Patricia . . . ” Eithne’s clear call reached them in their bedroom. “Telephone for you. From the States, I think.”

  “Wow!” Patricia flew out of the room and clattered down the stairs. “Dad?” Catriona heard her exultant cry as she took the receiver. Then there was a long silence, the sort that propelled Catriona out of her room to lean over the banister.

  She couldn’t see Pat from that angle, but she could see the concern on her aunt’s face and made her way quickly down the stairs. When she reached her cousin, Patricia’s eyes were dark with sadness and conflict.

  “Mother,” she began, and now that Catriona was close, she could hear the strident tones issuing from the instrument but could only distinguish an occasional word. “Mother, I don’t want to.”

  There was a stunned pause at the other end. Then: “What?” That came through loud and clear.

  “I want to stay with my father.”

  “So he got to you, did he, with his trips to your horsey cousins and backwater Ireland. Well, I’ll contest it. He’s not going to get my daughter. I’ll see to that. And you’ll see, young woman. You won’t get around—”

  “Mother, I’m fourteen. I’ve the right to choose!”

  “I’ve rights, too, goddamn it. You’ll see. You’ll see!” Abruptly the connection was broken.

  Patricia looked at the receiver blankly for a moment, gave a little shrug, and replaced it.

  “Drunk, and she expected me to jump at the chance to live with her,” Patricia said, glancing from Eithne to Catriona. “Well, I told her.”

  “Patricia! She’s your mother!” Eithne said.

  “And I’m supposed to want to live with my lush of a mother? And nurse her hangovers and clear up her vomit?”

  “Patricia!” Eithne was aghast.

  “Thank you, no. I’ve had enough of it. Dad gave her every chance to dry out, but all she has to do is smell liquor and she’s high. She doesn’t need a daughter: she needs a nurse. She’s made Daddy’s life miserable, and she’s embarrassed me and my brothers once too often. I’m glad Daddy’s divorcing her. I’m glad!”

  With that, Pat whirled and rushed up the stairs, sobs tearing from her throat. Eithne stared helplessly, but Catriona touched her arm gently.

  “I’ll go up, Auntie Eithne. I know how she’s feeling.”

  Catriona climbed the stairs to her room and found that Pat had flung herself on the lower bunk, her face buried in the pillows, her clenched fists flailing.

  Carefully Catriona put away the Tulip’s portrait and then sat down on the floor beside her cousin. She remembered, all too vividly, how she had felt and said nothing until Patricia’s sobs began to ease. Then Pat pushed her head around on the pillow, reddened, watery eyes accusing.

  “Your mother’s dead. Everyone feels sorry for you when your mother’s dead. But when she’s a disgusting, sniveling alcoholic, no one wants to know,” she said in a low, bitter voice.

  Catriona said nothing, merely pulled a wad of tissues from the box and passed them to Patricia, who almost wrenched them out of her hand.

  “She didn’t believe Daddy when he said that he’d filed for a divorce. She called because her lawyer just told her that he has a better chance for custody of us than she did with her record of drinking. She was so sure that I’d want to stay with her . . . .” Pat’s voice caught on another sob. “I hate her, Cat, I just hate her.”

  “You can’t hate your own mother . . . .”

  “Oh, yes, I can,” Pat replied fervently, glaring balefully at Catriona. “I can, and I do. You’ve no idea what it’s like living with a drunk; afraid that if your friends come home with you she’ll be raving, stinking stoned out of her tiny mind. Daddy tried and tried and tried. He was so good. But Shirley”—Patricia accented her mother’s name with a sneer—“didn’t care so long as she could get tanked up. It was bad enough when she set out to seduce someone else’s husband, right in front of everybody, but she couldn’t see how disgusting she was, all blurry in the face and the voice. Revolting. Oh, yes, I hate her. She handed me the right on a bar tray.” Pat broke into sobs again and buried her head in the pillow.

  Catriona sat there, unable to find any words of comfort. You couldn’t hate your parents: you had to love and respect and obey them. The Church said so. Yet she really could see how Pat had come to hate her mother. It was all very confusing. She felt so sorry for her cousin; she’d never thought anything could upset Pat so badly. She was so strong and so sure of everything. Catriona drew her knees up and hugged her legs, rocking a bit, then jumped when there was a gentle rapping at the door.

  “Pat?” Eithne called.

  Pat lifted her head slightly from the pillow. “Yeah?”

  “Perhaps if you phoned your father . . . ?”

  Patricia’s face lit up as she scrambled off the bed and opened the door. “Gee, could I, Auntie Eithne? I know his office number, but I hate to run up Uncle Mihall’s phone bill.” Hastily she wiped her wet cheeks with the backs of her hands.

  Eithne smiled at her niece. “I don’t think he’d object. And it occurred to me that perhaps your father should know that your mother phoned you. Mind now, don’t talk for hours,” she called as Pat raced down the stairs.

  After the evening meal, Michael phoned Selina to see if she would prefer to have Philip spend the night there again.

  “I know whom I would prefer to spend the night here,” she said, her voice rippling with laughter, “but I’ve stout new locks, and some interim burglarproof catches on all the ground-floor windows. Besides, a young handsome man like Philip spending two nights in the house is going to cause comment. Now, a distinguished older gentleman . . . ”

  “I thought we agreed to be discreet,” Michael said, chuckling.

  “Oh, but we would be. That poor Mrs. Healey . . . that’s what all the neighbors think, as well as half the people who’ve been here today. And everyone was here, it seems. The glazier to fix the side window. A man from David’s insurance brokers. A Securicor specialist for the locks. I’m supposed to’ve been frightened out of my wits by the occurrence. Actually, I’m seething that those louts had their hands on my things. Not to mention David’s.”

  “Is your face all right? Maybe we ought to have taken you to hospital last night.”

  “No, no, Eithne insisted that I go see the doctor and he said the ice had been the very best therapy. Who rode my bonnie Charlie today?” she asked, changing the subject deliberately.

  They went on to discuss the various horses in training, and when she rang off, Michael realized that he had not mentioned the vandalism. Just as well, he decided. Selina needed a good night’s rest with nothing to worry her.

  The next morning Selina arrived early and was greeted by Catriona and Patricia, who were shocked when they saw the livid bruising of
her cheek.

  “You’re making far too much of a silly scratch,” Selina said, comforting a distressed Catriona.

  “But it’s on your face,” cried Catriona. “Daddy never said you’d been wounded.”

  “Even the bruising will be gone by the weekend,” Selina said, “thanks to your aunt’s ice pack.” Then she caught sight of the open garage door and the hanks of horsehair festooning the place. “What on earth . . . ?”

  “It was that bastard Fitzroy,” Patricia began.

  “Pa-trish-a!” Michael held up a finger in warning.

  “Do you mean to tell me,” Selina said, running her hands down a huge swatch of black horse tail hairs, “that he cut off all the tails?”

  “The field horses,” ‘Michael said, “but not the stabled ones, so Charlie and your mare are intact.”

  “But Frolic was in the field, and Tulip’s Son . . . ”

  “They’re okay, Selina,” Pat assured her. “I know how to make false tails, so Cat and me made some yesterday. Mick said Frolic’s stayed on all night long, too. We’re going to work on the others today. The flies are fierce, and all the field horses need tails to switch with.”

  “I’ll lend a hand later this afternoon,” Selina offered.

  She and Michael were schooling Charlie when Eithne approached them anxiously, a letter in her outstretched hand.

  “Michael, it’s from Jack!”

  “All right, Selina, take a break,” Michael called, and took the letter from his sister-in-law.

  Tearing open the flimsy air-mail envelope, he extracted the equally thin sheets of tightly written script. In the first sentence he realized that Jack had not received word of his mother’s death until a month after the occurrence. Neither had he received Michael’s subsequent letter, for he begged details of her sudden demise, demanding that the hospital be sued for incompetence. For the remainder of the letter he alternated between describing his proposed schedule of prayers to speed her soul into the keeping of the Heavenly Father and offering anecdotes that testified to her piety and goodness. Seven pages of such effusions were more than Michael could bear. He skipped to the last paragraph, which contained the only deviation from piety and remorse: advice to his father to have a care for the welfare of his now motherless sister.