An Embarrassment of Riches

by Margaret Pemberton

  When she had been a small child Maura had not been able to understand her mother’s unwillingness to talk of his lordship and of Ballacharmish. Lately, however, she had begun to sympathize with her silence, knowing that if she herself had worked at Ballacharmish and had been forced to leave because the new lady of the house did not consider her grand enough, then she would not want to talk of her former employer or of Ballacharmish either.

  She stepped into the cool, dim greenness of the larchwoods. It had been Lady Dalziel who had taken objection to her mother’s presence at Ballacharmish and had her dismissed. Lady Dalziel was dead now and Maura’s most fervent hope was that her mother would now be reinstated. It was a hope so precious that she had not dared to put it into words, not even to Kieron.

  A breeze was blowing from the direction of Killaree and carried on it were the odours of open drains and pig offal and manure. Maura wrinkled her nose in distaste. If her mother was reinstated at Ballacharmish then she, at least, would no longer have to live among the squalor of the cabins. She would live in with the other servants as she had done before. She would sleep in a proper bed, not on a mouse-ridden straw pallet, and she would have porridge and milk for breakfast and would eat with the other servants at a big deal table in the servants’dining-room.

  A frown creased Maura’s brow as she slid down a precipitously steep incline. The only flaw to the wonderful prospect of her mother once again being a maid at Ballacharmish was that she would not be allowed to live in with her mother, and her mother would most certainly never live in without her.

  She pondered the problem, wondering how she could convince her mother that she was perfectly capable of living on her own. Perhaps if she confided in Kieron, Kieron would help to persuade her. Their patch of land was no problem. She knew all that there was to know about growing potatoes and oats and she already had sole responsibility for looking after their few hens and their aged she-goat. She was so deep in thought that she stubbed her toe on the root of a tree. She relieved her feelings by using a word she had heard Kieron use in similar circumstances and returned her attention to the problem in hand. What if Lord Clanmar asked his housekeeper to approach her mother about returning to Ballacharmish, and her mother refused, because of not wanting to leave her alone? The thought was so terrible that Maura stood stock-still, her throbbing, bloodied toe forgotten.

  Down beyond the trees she could see the cabins and a couple of her neighbours working their walled potato patches. She would have to speak to her mother. She would have to tell her of the hope she was nursing and of how, more than anything else in the world, she wanted her to return to Ballacharmish.

  With her decision made she immediately felt much better. She was by nature sunnily optimistic and she was suddenly quite sure that Lord Clanmar would ask his housekeeper to reinstate her mother as a downstairs maid, and that when she did so, her mother would accept. How could she not? How could anyone turn down the prospect of living at wonderful, magical, fairy-tale Ballacharmish?

  ‘… and so I thought I should have a word with you first, Ma, in case you thought I wouldn’t be able to manage on my own,’ she finished triumphantly an hour later as her mother wearily stacked freshly cut peat sods against the outside rear wall of their cabin.

  Mary Sullivan paused in her back-breaking task and regarded her daughter in bewilderment. ‘Sure, Maura, and I haven’t understood a word that you’ve said.’

  ‘Now that Lord Clanmar is back he’ll be asking for you to return to Ballacharmish and when he does so, you must go! Please say you will, Ma! Please!’

  Her mother gave an exasperated shake of her head and bent down to lift another sod. Hard physical work and rough living had rendered her old before her time. Although only twenty-nine, her fragile-boned face was gaunt, her hands chapped and calloused. ‘If I didn’t know you better, Maura, I’d think Kieron had been feeding you poteen, Lord Clanmar indeed!’ She wedged the peat into place, smiling tiredly at her daughter’s foolishness. ‘The likes of his lordship don’t pay any heed to their domestic staff, Maura, and I’m surprised at you for thinking that they would.’

  ‘But you were different, Ma!’ Maura persisted, her eyes urgent. ‘You didn’t come from an agency in Dublin! You were the only person from Killaree ever to be employed at Ballacharmish and you’re still one of his tenants! Lord Clanmar would remember you, I know he would!’

  Her mother stopped what she was doing and pressed a hand to the middle of her back to ease the intolerable ache. A curious expression had come across her face and she was no longer looking at Maura but was gazing beyond the cabins to the dirt-road that led to Ballacharmish.

  Maura felt slightly uncomfortable as she always did whenever her mother retreated into a world of her own. After a moment she said hesitantly, ‘I wouldn’t be feared of living on my own, Ma. Kieron would call by and …’

  Her mother turned towards her, dragging her thoughts back to the present with obvious effort. ‘It’s nonsense you’re talking, Maura Sullivan, and well you know it,’ she said, her usually gentle voice censuringly brisk. ‘Now make yourself useful and hand me up the peat sods.’

  Maura bent down and grasped hold of a black, squelchy sod. She couldn’t let the conversation end there. Somehow she had to convince her mother of the great changes that were about to take place in their lives. She handed her the sod, saying tenaciously, ‘Now that Lady Dalziel is dead, there’s no reason for you not to be a maid once more and to live in and to …’

  ‘No, Maura.’ There was an inflection in her mother’s voice that Maura had never heard before, a note of utter finality. She stacked the sod neatly into place then she turned, brushing her hands against the much-mended rags of her skirt, saying a trifle unsteadily, ‘I know the rumours that flew around the valley when I was dismissed from Ballacharmish, but I hadn’t realized that they had reached you and that you were believing them and filling your head with nonsensical notions. If I had known I would have told you the truth long ago.’

  ‘The truth?’ Maura’s heart began to beat fast and light. ‘But everyone knows the truth, Ma. Lady Dalziel …’

  ‘Lady Dalziel had nothing whatsoever to do with my being dismissed from Ballacharmish, Maura.’

  Her mother’s face was very pale and very still and Maura was filled with a sudden, almost overwhelming presentiment of disaster. ‘It’s all right, Ma,’ she said hastily, not wanting to hear any more, wishing that she had never begun the conversation. ‘I shouldn’t have begun talking about Ballacharmish. I …’

  ‘I left Ballacharmish of my own free will,’ her mother continued remorselessly, ‘and I did so for my own private and personal reasons.’

  Maura stared at her round-eyed. ‘But …’ she faltered. ‘But I don’t understand!’ It was as if there was a huge weight pressing down on her chest, robbing her of her breath. ‘Why would you do such a thing, Ma? Why would anyone do such a thing?’

  Her mother was no longer looking at her. Once again her gaze was on the meandering dirt-road that led to Ballacharmish. ‘I had my own reasons,’ she said quietly, her eyes dark with emotions Maura couldn’t begin to comprehend. ‘But leaving as I did, I can never go back. So there’s an end of it, Maura. No more moon-talk of Ballacharmish. No more foolish, impossible dreams.’

  That night Maura lay awake long after her mother had fallen asleep. Tears glittered on her eyelashes. Her mother often told her fairy-tales to keep her quiet, but there had been nothing of the fairy-tale about their conversation that afternoon. For some reason of her own, some reason that she couldn’t even begin to understand, her mother had left Ballacharmish of her own volition and not because Lady Dalziel had asked that she do so. But why? It didn’t make any sense. She tossed restlessly on the straw pallet. Nor did it matter. Whatever the reason, her mother’s tone of voice had told her even more than her words had done, that her decision to leave had been one that was irrevocable. There could be no going back. The dream that had been such a comfort to her was a comfort no
longer and she felt utterly bereft. She closed her eyes tight, trying not to let her tears fall, and suddenly remembered the wave she had received that afternoon from Lord Clanmar’s granddaughter. Despite her misery she felt a sudden tiny surge of elation. It had been such an unexpected, extraordinary gesture. She wondered when she would see Lady Isabel Dalziel again. And if the wave would be repeated.

  The next morning Kieron strode by the Sullivan potato patch, Mr Fitzgerald’s dog again at his heels. ‘His lordship is home and with a vengeance,’ he called out to her zestfully, a faded blue shirt open at his throat, his breeches tucked into a pair of Mr Fitzgerald’s cast-off boots. ‘He was up at sunrise this morning and out with Mr Fitzgerald, inspecting his crops. Once that task is over he intends making a call on all his tenants. You’d best warn your mother. She’ll want to be prepared.’

  ‘You mean Lord Clanmar is coming to the cabins?’ Maura asked stunned, breaking off from her task of thinning out the whitely flowering plants and sitting back on her heels.

  Kieron nodded, grinning broadly in anticipation of the entertainment such a visit promised. ‘Mr Fitzgerald says it’s always been his lordship’s habit to make such tours of inspection whenever he has returned after an absence. This time, as he’s been absent for longer than ever before, he’s intent on inspecting every blade of grass and renewing his acquaintance with every tenant, however drunk and disreputable they might be.’

  Maura thought of the O’Flahertys and the Murphys who seemed to exist solely on their evilly strong, homebrewed poteen. In all her eight years she had never seen old Ned Murphy sober and she doubted if Lord Clanmar would either.

  ‘I’d best go tell Ma now,’ she said, scrambling to her feet. ‘Sure, but she’s going to be in an awful taking.’

  ‘The Lord alone knows whether he intends entering any cabins, but he might very well do so,’ Kieron said cheerfully, unknowingly adding to her anxieties. ‘Mr Fitzgerald says he was taking tea with Father Connelly late yester afternoon.’

  ‘Heaven and all the saints!’ At the thought of Lord Clanmar sitting amidst the squalor of a Killaree cabin, Maura’s face paled. What if he should ask to enter their cabin? How would her mother, who had once waited on his lordship in his own grand saloon, survive the shame of it?

  Without even pausing to say goodbye to Kieron she broke into a run. In all her eight years, such a thing had never happened. Even Mr Fitzgerald did not enter the cabins. If he had anything he wished to say to any Ballacharmish tenant he merely rode down the mud- and pig-manure-caked bohereen, reined in his horse outside the required hovel and called out the name of whoever it was he wished to speak with. Business or chastisement was then conducted in the bohereen with much forelock tugging on the part of the tenant, and much condescension on the part of Mr Fitzgerald.

  As she raced towards the cabins she could see that word of Lord Clanmar’s likely visit had already spread. Women were gathered at their doors and men were drifting back from the fields looking nervous and perplexed.

  Maura ignored them, running fleet-footedly down the bohereen to where the Sullivans’ cabin stood, slightly isolated from its neighbours. Her mother was sitting in the doorway, sewing a patch on to a skirt made up of nothing but similar patches. The very sight reminded Maura of how different her mother was from her neighbours. No other woman in Killaree could sew. Her mother had been taught by her English-speaking aunt and her precious needles and thread and scissors and bits and pieces of fabric were legacies from her days of good fortune at Dublin Castle.

  She looked up apprehensively as Maura hurtled towards her. ‘Has there been an accident?’ she asked anxiously, rising swiftly to her feet. ‘Is it Kieron?’

  ‘No, there’s been no accident,’ Maura panted, staggering to a halt. ‘But there’s news. Kieron says Lord Clanmar is inspecting his crops and that when he’s finished he intends making a call on all his tenants!’

  Her mother looked as if she had received news of a death. ‘Here?’ she said numbly, her face ashen. ‘He’s coming to the cabins?’

  Maura nodded. If it hadn’t been for her mother telling her how she had walked out of Ballacharmish, she would have been in seventh heaven at the prospect of seeing his lordship in the flesh. As it was, she was too aware of the offence her mother’s action must have caused, and the discomfiture her mother would feel in his Lordship’s presence, to be able to take any pleasure from it.

  ‘Kieron had it from Mr Fitzgerald himself so it must be true. He says Lord Clanmar had tea with Father Connelly yester afternoon and that he might expect to do the same when he visits Killaree.’

  Her mother took a deep, steadying breath and broke off her thread, running her needle securely through the faded material she had been stitching. ‘Then Kieron is a fool and so is his lordship,’ she said with unusual tartness. ‘Tea, indeed! I’d like to know who in Killaree has tea to offer!’

  She turned on her heel, entering the small, dark room that was their home. ‘The most his lordship will meet with in Killaree is Ned Murphy’s poteen!’

  Maura watched from the doorway as her mother put her sewing away in a large wood chest that had been her inheritance from her aunt and was their only piece of real furniture. Although she was making a valiant attempt to appear undisturbed by the news of Lord Clanmar’s impending visit, Maura knew that she was dreadfully distressed by it. Her hands had been shaking when she had run her needle through her sewing and she was now avoiding facing her by bending over the chest, fussing unnecessarily with its paltry contents.

  ‘We don’t have to be here when he comes, Ma,’ she said helpfully, trying not to let disappointment at such a prospect show in her voice.

  Her mother slowly replaced the garments she had been holding and stood, unmoving, for a long moment. When she finally turned around her composure was genuine, not feigned.

  ‘That would be running away, Maura, and we, neither of us, have any need to run away. Now out to the water-butt and scrub yourself clean or you’ll have his lordship mistaking you for a Murphy.’

  Maura scurried away elatedly. She was going to see his lordship as near-to as she sometimes had seen Mr Fitzgerald. She wondered if he would come to Killaree in his carriage or if he would ride a horse. She wondered if his flaxen-haired granddaughter would be with him and hoped desperately that she would be. If she was, she wondered if there would be recognition in her eyes when they met and if so, if recognition would be followed by horror or amusement.

  The sound of a distant commotion broke in on her thoughts and she shook the water from her eyes and ran around the corner of the cabin for a view up the bohereen.

  Fifty yards away, outside Ned Murphy’s cabin, Lord Clanmar was mounted on a seventeen-hand, bay gelding. Mr Fitzgerald was at his side astride his chestnut mare and Kieron was stood a few paces away, Mr Fitzgerald’s dog at his feet. It was old Ned Murphy, patriarch of Killaree’s multitudinous Murphy clan, who was causing the disturbance.

  ‘To be sure, my lord, I was only holding on to my rents until your lordship returned and I would be able to have the pleasure of giving you the rents misself.’

  Maura grinned to herself. It was well known in Killaree that no matter what Mr Fitzgerald’s threats, rent was never forthcoming from Ned.

  ‘Well, here I am, Ned, in the flesh,’ Lord Clanmar said affably. ‘Perhaps we could make Mr Fitzgerald happy by now squaring the books?’

  ‘To be sure and we can,’ Old Ned said, making no effort at movement. ‘Only I think I’ll have to be waiting another couple of weeks, your lordship, being taken by surprise so to speak at your lordship’s arrival.’

  ‘Another couple of weeks will not be acceptable,’ Lord Clanmar said, his voice still pleasantly reasonable. ‘I have it on good authority from Mr Fitzgerald that no rent has been paid by you for over two years. Any other land-agent would have evicted you by now. I want that money paid by the end of the week, Ned. If it isn’t, you’ll only have yourself to blame for the consequences.’

  �
��Jesus, Mary and Joseph, but you’re a hard man, your lordship!’ Ned wailed, looking around for support from his neighbours and finding none.

  Maura wasn’t surprised. Kieron had told her that during the famine years Lord Clanmar had waived all rents and had arranged for imported oats and potatoes to be regularly distributed in Killaree. In the years since, his tenants had been happy to pay their rents, knowing that they would not suffer the fate so many of their countrymen were suffering, that of being evicted in order that land could be farmed more economically.

  Ned’s wailing had been taken up by his wife and showed every sign of gaining volume as his brow-beaten sons and daughters, sons-in-law and daughters-in-law, began to also protest in kind.

  Lord Clanmar seemed undisturbed by the rumpus. He had dismounted and was walking down the bohereen exchanging a word here and there with the O’Flahertys and the Flynns who were crowding the doors of their evil-smelling cabins. Maura raced to her own cabin, calling out urgently as she entered, ‘His lordship is here, Ma! He’s coming this way!’

  Her mother stepped slowly towards her. She had neatened her thick dark hair, pulling it back off her face and twisting it in a knot in the nape of her neck. The dress she was wearing was one Maura had never seen before, one that had obviously lain secreted at the bottom of the chest awaiting a special occasion such as the one that had now arrived. It was a deep dark red and there were no patches on it, no tears or stains.

  Maura gave a gasp of wonder. ‘You look wonderful, Ma,’ she said truthfully. ‘Just like a lady.’

  ‘Ladies don’t go barefoot,’ her mother said drily and as she finished speaking a tall, dark shadow fell across the doorway.

  ‘Mrs Sullivan?’

  It was Mr Fitzgerald. Mary walked towards him, her back as straight and her head as high as if her hovel of a home was a palace.