An Embarrassment of Riches

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘You’ve never visited Tarna, have you?’ he enquired as they strode towards the owners’ enclosure. ‘My grandfather was passionate about horses. The stud he founded at Tarna is heaven on earth. Why don’t you visit for a few days and see around it?’

  ‘Wonderful!’ Henry’s heavily lined face lit up with happy anticipation and then he paused, his elation dying. ‘However, my relations with your father are not exactly close and …’

  ‘And it might be better if you came when he was elsewhere,’ Alexander finished for him. ‘I quite agree. But there isn’t a problem. Pa is always on the move. I’ll let you know when he’s absent and you can drop by. After all,’ he added, his voice full of mischief, ‘you are family.’

  In any other circumstance Henry would have taken umbrage at being reminded that his own distinguished family and the upstart Karolyises were connected. Now, thinking of the incomparable horses of Tarna, he nodded agreeably. Victor Karolyis wouldn’t take exception at his dropping by at Tarna. Victor never minded being troubled by his Schermerhorn relations. And he might be able to negotiate a very favourable price for an exceptionally good horse. All in all, the day was turning out far better than could have been expected.

  Out of the corner of his eye Alexander could see Charlie edging along among the hordes to the left of them, his hands deep in his pockets. He was beginning to look distinctly woebegone and Alexander felt a pang of conscience.

  ‘I must be on my way now,’ he said with genuine regret. ‘But don’t forget the invite to Tarna. Karolyis horses beat what you’ve seen today hands down.’

  Bidding his new-found friend goodbye he pushed his way through the throng towards Charlie.

  ‘Not before time,’ Charlie said petulantly, seriously disgruntled. ‘Couldn’t you have escaped from the old bore a little sooner?’

  ‘Henry isn’t an old bore,’ Alexander said, enjoying Charlie’s fit of pique. ‘It’s just that you’re too immature to appreciate him.’

  The remark was so patently ridiculous that Charlie ignored it, saying with interest, ‘Was he furious with you for being here?’

  Alexander stopped his teasing. ‘I think he was more annoyed, at first, at my finding him here. When he got over that he didn’t seem to mind. But then,’ he added drily, seeing Charlie’s look of disbelief, ‘I’m a Karolyis, not a Schermerhorn. I doubt if he would have been so easy on you.’

  Charlie doubted it as well. ‘Let’s find a likely tout and put some money on the next race,’ he said, eager to get down to the business of the day. ‘Did Uncle Henry give you any good tips? Does he know the runners? Why the devil didn’t you somehow let me know you were putting your money on Colourful Dancer?’

  Alexander was barely listening to him. The race track was exciting but not as exciting as their next venture was going to be. How were they to storm Madame Josie Woods’establishment? Would she throw them out? Tell their fathers? And if she didn’t? If she allowed them to stay? What then? Would he be able to acquit himself without making a fool of himself? He felt his sex harden. He had no intention of gaining his sexual experience via fumbled gropings with his father’s domestic staff. It was a method Charlie had so far found satisfactory, but one which he knew he never would. If a thing was worth doing, it was worth doing well, and Josie’s girls were reputed to be the very best there were.

  His thoughts were so far from the race track that he barely noticed when his next horse trailed last to the winning post. It didn’t matter anyway. Money wasn’t important. There was always plenty more to replace any he might lose.

  ‘I hope to Christ we aren’t seen and recognized!’ Charlie said agitatedly the next evening as they approached the discreet front door behind which Madame Josie Woods kept house.

  Well aware that Charlie was on the verge of losing his nerve, Alexander kept his voice placatingly cool. ‘Stop panicking, Charlie. If we are seen, we can always say that we mistook the house for the Commodore’s.’

  Charlie giggled. Cornelius Vanderbilt’s house was only a spit away. ‘What if she won’t allow us in? Rumour is that she only accepts as new clients people existing clients introduce.’

  ‘A Schermerhorn and a Karolyis?’ Alexander asked with a quirk of his eyebrow. ‘She’ll let us in all right, Charlie. Madame Woods is just as big a snob as the rest of New York society.’

  The flutterings in Charlie’s stomach became unpleasantly seismic. It was obvious that Alexander had no intention of turning tail. There was going to be no escape. Even as he tried desperately to think of an excuse for leaving the scene, the door was opened by a pertly uniformed maid.

  ‘Mr Karolyis and Mr Schermerhorn for Madame Woods,’ Alexander said with a coolness he was far from feeling.

  The maid stared at them, round-eyed. They were no older than herself and they had certainly never visited before. The names were, however, distinguished and familiar, too familiar for her to risk closing the door on them. ‘This way if you please,’ she said dubiously, leading the way inside.

  Alexander took a deep breath and followed her, Charlie hard on his heels. As they walked down a scarlet carpeted corridor he looked around him with interest. If this was a brothel, it was nothing like any of his imaginings.

  It could have been the home of one of his relations or of one of his father’s friends. There were festoons of silken drapes at the windows, elegant paintings and mirrors on the walls. The furniture was heavy and dark, the chandeliers opulent. They followed the decorously attired maid into a small sitting-room and acquiesced to her request that they be seated. Seconds later they were on their own.

  ‘I’m not happy about this, Alexander,’ Charlie said, shifting uncomfortably on a ridiculously insubstantial damask-and-gold armchair. ‘The atmosphere’s all wrong. It’s too …’

  He broke off as the door opened and Josie Woods swept majestically in on them, her floor-sweeping taffeta dress rustling and crackling around her. For a long moment she regarded them silently and then she sat down opposite them.

  ‘Yes?’ she said queryingly. ‘Do you have a message for someone? How can I be of assistance to you?’

  Alexander had only seen her before at a distance. A lady of middling years, she had always looked matriarchally magnificent, rows of pearls laying in splendour upon her awe-inspiring bosom. Near to she was even more matriarchally intimidating and he could hear Charlie’s sigh of relief at being given an excuse both to retain his dignity and to tail off. Before Charlie could concoct some idiotic supposed message he said with a slight, disarming shrug of a shoulder, ‘We have no messages, Mrs Wood. We’re here as prospective clients.’

  Josie Wood was well aware of the fact. Her questions had merely been a way of stalling for time. She ran a rigidly well-ordered house and she was not in the business of corrupting minors. However, despite the fact that neither of her visitors had long been shaving, both were superbly over six foot tall. She was also mindful of the fact that young Schermerhorn was a scion of one of the most respected of all Old Guard families, and that young Karolyis, if he possessed even an eighth of his grandfather’s and father’s financial genius, would one day be richer than all her other unimaginably rich clients put together.

  She adjusted the heavy taffeta of her skirt, saying pleasantly, ‘This establishment is a brothel, gentlemen. Not a nursery.’

  ‘We’re not in need of a nursery,’ Alexander said easily, refusing to be intimidated. ‘But we are in need of the kind of experience that your house can provide.’ He grinned suddenly, and Josie was as aware of his devastating charm as Henry Schermerhorn had been. ‘Wouldn’t you prefer that we gained our sexual experience here,’ he asked disarmingly, ‘rather than our taking advantage of a family maid?’

  Josie was well aware of the number of hitherto respectable young girls whose lives had been ruined by the sexual experimentations of the sons of their employers. Alexander Karolyis was right. She would prefer that he and young Schermerhorn gained sexual experience with girls whose lives would not be ruined
in the process.

  ‘The clients who are received here are strictly limited in number,’ she said, wondering how she was to go about ensuring that young Schermerhorn and his father would not one day meet ascending or descending her opulent staircase. ‘My girls receive fifty dollars from each client they privately entertain. Is that acceptable?’

  Charlie swallowed hard, not knowing whether his knees were weak with fear or with elation. Alexander merely nodded. He already knew what the financial arrangements were. He wondered if the girls would be brought down for their inspection. The prospect of making a choice, in the manner of a Sheik in an Eastern harem, strongly appealed to him. Josie, reading his mind with practised ease, had no intention of fulfilling his fancy. He was already too self-assured for his own good. She rang the bell and when the maid entered, said in an accent equal to that of any Stuyvesant or Brevoort, ‘Please inform Helena and Christabel that there are clients waiting for them.’

  Charlie Schermerhorn lifted his jacketed arm to wipe the perspiration from his brow.

  ‘It is customary for gentlemen to take bottles of champagne upstairs with them,’ Josie said, taking pity on him. ‘Would Veuve Cliquot be suitable?’

  Charlie nodded thankfully and Josie turned towards Alexander with an enquiring lift of her beautifully arched brows.

  ‘Put a bottle of Château Bel Air Marquis d’Aligre on my bill,’ he said with negligent ease.

  Josie’s amusement deepened. The boy knew his wines. And could afford them. With his heart-stopping good looks, beguiling manner and immeasurable family wealth, he was a young man to reckon with. And he knew it. The corners of her mouth quirked in affectionate remembrance. Her old friend, Sandor Karolyis, would have been proud of him.

  Chapter Three

  Summer sunlight streamed into the room that Lord Clanmar had set aside as a schoolroom for Isabel and Maura. Over the years the room had changed in furnishings and aspect. Originally it had contained two small desks and a rather larger one for himself, three serviceable chairs and a modest bookcase. The room was at the rear of the house and had looked out over the vegetable gardens and beyond the vegetable gardens, empty parkland.

  Within a very short time the bookcase had proved inadequate for Isabel’s and Maura’s needs and bookshelves had been built in on all four walls. The view, too, had radically changed. Isabel’s maternal grandparent’s home in Oxfordshire had been surrounded by rose gardens and she had missed their beauty and fragrance. In consequence, the vegetable gardens had been removed to a site further distant from the house and Lord Clanmar and Isabel and Maura had set about creating a garden of their own. They had done it for pleasure and without any assistance other than that of Kieron who had undertaken all the heavy work. Now, nine years later, the schoolroom looked out over a vista of roses. Creamy-pale Botzari ran riot with smoky-pink Belle Isis. Faint-flushed Isaphans from Persia vied for space with frilled cerise La Reines from Provence. Magenta Tour de Malakoffs with deep-drowned purple hearts, rampaged over a sun-dial. A Rose de l’Isle smothered the house wall scattering ragged silvery-pearl petals to the ground.

  The parkland, too, was no longer an empty vista of rolling green sward. Lord Clanmar had taught both girls to ride and they had progressed from sedate Connemara ponies to high-spirited British hunters. Their original much-loved ponies grazed in the parkland beyond the garden, kept company by all the horses Lord Clanmar had since bought, for his own pleasure, and for Isabel’s and Maura’s.

  There had been other changes, too. The two school-desks had soon proved too small and two Georgian knee-hole desks with rising lined tops had replaced them. As the years had passed Lord Clanmar had found it increasingly incongruous to instruct his pupils from behind the formality of his desk. He had had a winged easy chair installed in the room for his own use, and two ladies’ upholstered chairs for Isabel and Maura. Quite often, as now, schoolroom lessons took the form of a comfortable, friendly discussion as they sat in a group at the open french windows, looking out over the riot of roses and the grazing horses beyond.

  ‘I find it all too strange to comprehend,’ Isabel was saying, referring to Darwin’s Origin of Species open on her lap.

  The corners of Lord Clanmar’s mouth twitched in the suspicion of a smile. He, too, on his first reading of it, had found it almost too strange to comprehend.

  He said patiently, ‘What Darwin is saying, Isabel, is that among all animals there is a struggle for existence. The individuals who exhibit variations in height or colour that confer on them an advantage in hunting for food will be in Darwin’s phrase, “naturally selected”. That is, they will survive and breed and since offspring tend to resemble their parents, the parents’advantageous, adaptive variations will be transmitted from generation to generation. Those too weak to compete in the struggle for existence will die before being able to breed. As a result, over thousands of generations, a new species will be in the process of evolving.’

  ‘I think I understand Mr Darwin’s reasoning,’ Maura said, brushing a windblown Rose de l’Isle petal from her skirt, ‘but I don’t agree at all with his conclusions.’

  Lord Clanmar settled himself more comfortably in his chair. He hadn’t for a moment thought that Maura would be in agreement with Charles Darwin. Although she had changed almost unrecognizably from the bare-foot urchin he had taken into his home nine years ago, one thing about her had never changed and that had been her loyalty to the faith she had been born into. Every Sunday morning, while he and Isabel attended morning service at the Anglican church in Rathdrum, Maura attended Mass at the local Catholic church.

  ‘It isn’t enough to feel intuitively that Mr Darwin’s theory is incorrect,’ he criticized gently. ‘You have to be able to coherently argue against his theory.’

  Maura smiled affectionately at him. Over the years he had taught her to be an adept arguer for and against theories as varied as Plato’s Theory of Universals and Jeremy Bentham’s Theory of Utilitarianism.

  ‘All right,’ she said agreeably. ‘First I would like to know where the missing links are between major groups of animals, say between birds and reptiles. How could entirely new features such as wings have evolved? How is it that man has been totally unable to breed a new species if it is possible for nature to breed one?’

  Isabel closed her book with a thud. ‘Enough! I know you two. You will be arguing the pros and cons of Mr Darwin’s wretched theory until the cows come home. Can’t we move on to something more interesting? The war in America, for instance?’

  Her grandfather relinquished the subject of Darwin’s revolutionary theories with regret. He and Maura enjoyed having argumentative discussions on nearly every subject under the sun, but though she was barely a year younger than Maura, Isabel’s interests were far more circumscribed. He wondered again about their respective futures. In another couple of years Isabel would no doubt spend a season in London under the care of her maternal grandmother, meet a suitable young man of her own class and marry. But there would be no such suitable marriage for a girl who was the illegitimate daughter of an Irish peasant.

  As he pondered the problem he felt a twinge of discomfort in the region of his heart. He had felt such twinges before and knew them for what they were, intimations of mortality. He frowned. If he should die now, Maura would be totally unprovided for. Even her position as his ward was one that was quite unofficial. It was high time he made suitable provision for her and he resolved to make an appointment with his Dublin solicitor at the earliest opportunity.

  ‘Are you feeling tired?’ Maura was asking him concernedly. ‘Would you like to leave discussion of the war until tomorrow?’

  He shook his head, rallying himself with an effort. Maura’s eyes darkened in concern. She had noticed his quick intake of breath a few moments ago, and the flash of anxiety that had darkened his eyes. She wondered whether she should suggest to him that he pay a visit to England in order to visit his London doctor. There were doctors in Rathdrum and Dublin, of course, but they
were not men he had any confidence in. If anything was seriously wrong with him it would be better for him if he were in London rather than immured in the wilds of Wicklow.

  She had long ago ceased to think of him as being merely Lord Clanmar, her benefactor. He was far more than that to her. He was her friend and her family and she loved him as dearly as she loved her mother.

  In the soporific heat a butterfly darted amongst the riot of blossom. The air zoomed with bees. Drowsily Maura allowed her mind to wander, remembering her early days at Ballacharmish, remembering the wonder with which each moment had been filled.

  First of all there had been the almost paralysing experience of stepping alone into the carriage that had been put at her disposal. The donkey-cart had been sent for her paltry belongings but Kieron, who had driven it, had told her that Lord Clanmar had given instructions that on no account was she to arrive at her new home accompanying her luggage. She was to arrive in the manner from which now on she would be treated. She was to arrive as Isabel had arrived. As a young lady in a Clanmar carriage.

  The entire Murphy tribe turned out to see her go, much to her mother’s mortification. ‘Stinking Murphys,’ she said as old Ned rolled drunkenly down the bohereen to see a sight he otherwise would not believe. ‘If this was Sullivan country the air would be a lot cleaner and sweeter.’

  Maura was too stupefied with excitement to give any thought to the Murphys. The open carriage was huge and glossy black. On the door the Clanmar coat of arms gleamed richly.

  ‘Am I really to get into it alone, Ma?’ she whispered, awe-struck. ‘I thought Kieron would be driving it. I thought…’

  A bemused footman had stepped down from the box and was holding the door open for her.

  Her mother put both her hands on her shoulders, her eyes holding hers. ‘Yes, you are, Maura Sullivan,’ she said firmly. ‘You are to leave the filth and stench of Killaree for good. I shall see you again but never back here, is that understood?’