An Embarrassment of Riches

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘But what if I don’t suit? What if Lord Clanmar changes his mind?’

  At the anguish in her voice her mother’s face softened. ‘You’ll suit,’ she said with so much certainty that Maura couldn’t help but believe her. ‘Now off you go, little one, and God bless.’

  Maura had kissed her, made her promise that she would see her soon, and had then stepped bare-footed into the carriage. She was wearing a dress that no-one, least of all one of the many watching Murphys, could deride. It was the dark red dress that her mother had worn when Lord Clanmar had visited them. Her mother had carefully altered it, shortening the hem, taking in the seams, so that now it fitted Maura as if it had been made for her. She sat stiffly upright in the centre of the leather-padded seat, spreading her skirts carefully at either side of her.

  Killaree’s inhabitants had gathered intending to have a bit of fun at the freakish sight of one of their own in his lordship’s carriage. Now they began to think better of it for it was almost as if Mary Sullivan’s bastard was not, and never had been, one of their own, and they didn’t want to run the risk of the footmen reporting ribald comments back to Lord Clanmar.

  The horses began to pick their way carefully up the bohereen. Maura clasped her hands tightly in her lap. It was really happening! She was going to Ballacharmish, and she was not going as she had always dreamed of going; walking up the valley towards it, entering at the tradesmen’s gate and walking the pathway to the rear of the house as her mother had been used to do. She was going in a manner she had never imagined in her wildest dreams. She was going in a carriage. She was going to enter by the main gates and she was going to be set down at the front entrance.

  ‘Heavens and all the saints,’ she whispered devoutly to herself, her eyes shining, ‘but isn’t this the most wonderful thing that could ever happen to a person? Isn’t this just like one of Ma’s wonderful fairy-tales?’

  The carriage was not quite as comfortable as she had imagined it would be. It rocked and swayed and she slid from side to side on the polished leather seat. When it stopped at the giant wrought-iron gates she hardly dared to breathe. If it was a dream she was having, this was the moment when she would wake. This was the moment when reality would reassert itself.

  The footman jumped down from the box and swung the gates wide. The horses walked forward and as the carriage rolled into Ballacharmish’s vast parkland the footman closed the gates behind them and vaulted back into his seat.

  Maura let out a trembling sigh. She hadn’t woken. She wasn’t in a dark and stifling cabin in Killaree. She was inside the grounds of Ballacharmish. She wasn’t dreaming a dream. She was living it.

  Incredibly there were figures beneath the distant portico waiting to greet her, just as there had been figures waiting to greet Lord Clanmar and Lady Isabel. She strained her eyes, swallowing disbelievingly. The tall, white-haired figure was unmistakable. Lord Clanmar was waiting to greet her himself, his granddaughter at his side.

  Maura dug her nails deeper into her palms. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ she whispered frantically. ‘What am I to say? What am I to do?’

  Her terror lasted until the carriage swayed to a halt at the foot of the porch steps. The footman opened the door for her and as he did so Lord Clanmar and his granddaughter walked down the steps towards her.

  ‘Welcome to Ballacharmish, my dear,’ Lord Clanmar said, overlooking her bare feet with equanimity. ‘Welcome to your new home.’

  ‘Was it you who waved to me when I arrived?’ the little figure at his side asked eagerly.

  Maura tried to speak and failed. She nodded and Lady Isabel gave a gurgle of delight and stepped forward, slipping Maura’s arm companionably through her own. ‘I’m so glad it was you! I knew then that we were going to be the greatest of friends. Let me show you your room. It’s next to mine and is so pretty. You can see Lough Suir from the window, and Mount Keadeen and Mount Lùgnaquillia,’ and chattering gaily she had escorted Maura up the steps and into the house.

  ‘… it is exactly the same kind of mystery as the mystery as to why the Confederates didn’t march on Washington after their early success at Bull Run,’ Lord Clanmar was saying meditatively. ‘If they had done, it would have been a blow the Union could scarcely have recovered from. As it is, a negotiated peace now seems impossible, as does outright success in battle for either side. Historically, no country as large as the Confederacy has ever been totally subdued. The difficulties are just too great.’

  ‘As Napoleon found in Russia,’ Maura said succinctly, a gleam of mischief in her eyes.

  Britain’s ex-Ambassador to St Petersburg wagged a finger remonstratively at her. ‘I am not going to fall into that trap, my pet. As you are well aware I could talk about Napoleon’s abortive Russian campaign for days on end, but that is not the issue at the moment. What do you think the North’s next move is going to be? Are they going to drive south to Memphis and Atlanta, or are they going to consolidate their present position?’

  At three o’clock, when lessons for the day were over, Isabel went to her room to rest and Maura changed into a riding skirt and boots. Horse-riding had become her greatest love and she had arranged to ride with Kieron to the far end of Lough Suir where her mother now lived.

  Her mother’s move away from Killaree had taken place three months after her own move to Ballacharmish. Lord Clanmar, knowing by then that Ballacharmish was going to be Maura’s long-term home, had been unhappy at the thought of her returning regularly to Killaree and being distressed by the conditions in which her mother was living. When the tenancy of a small stone-built farmhouse at the southern end of Lough Suir had fallen vacant, he had offered the tenancy to Mary Sullivan on the understanding that the rent would be paid in kind. Ballacharmish was in dire need of a seamstress and Maura had told him of how skilled her mother was with a needle. From then on, linen needing mending was despatched to her weekly in the donkey-cart, the previous weeks completed mending being then collected and returned.

  It was an arrangement that had worked admirably. Away from the stench of open drains and pig offal, Mary Sullivan had begun to blossom again. She was able to grow all the fruit and vegetables that she needed for herself and Liam Fitzgerald had taken to calling by and paying his respects. There had been a time when Maura had been certain the friendship would end in marriage, but in the autumn of 1859 Liam Fitzgerald had been fatally injured in a tree-felling accident. Her mother lost her new-found radiance, Liam’s collie attached itself permanently to Kieron, and Lord Clanmar appointed Kieron land-agent for Ballacharmish and its estates.

  He was waiting for her now astride a chestnut Barbary. ‘Where on earth have you been?’ he asked in mock impatience as she hurried into the stables. ‘Another five minutes and I would have given you up and ridden down to the shebeen.’

  Maura grinned as she stepped up onto the mounting-block. To the best of her knowledge Kieron hadn’t been near the shebeen since becoming land-agent. At twenty-five he was the youngest land-agent anyone could ever recall and though his responsibilities sat easily on him he took them seriously. Liam had never joined the Flynns and the Murphys drinking home-brewed poteen in the local shebeen and since becoming land-agent he had never done so either.

  ‘I’ve been discussing what tactics General Ulysses S. Grant should adopt in order to bring the American civil war to a swift conclusion.’

  ‘A pity it is that he isn’t this side of the Atlantic to hear them,’ Kieron said with an answering grin. He liked to hear of the subjects she and Isabel discussed in their lessons with Lord Clanmar, though it perplexed him a little that the lessons still continued now that Isabel was sixteen and Maura seventeen.

  Maura settled herself in the side-saddle and picked up her reins. She was riding the British hunter that had been bought her for her last birthday. The ride down to Lough Suir was not a stretching one and she was trying to decide which way she should return in order to exercise him to the full. ‘Shall we come back via Glendalough?’ she asked as t
hey cantered out of the yard.

  Kieron’s grin faded. ‘You may not have time for a long return ride,’ he said, his eyes darkening. ‘I had word a half-hour ago that your mother is not very well.’

  Maura’s pleasure in the day and in the ride ahead of her vanished. Her mother was never ill. ‘Who told you?’ she demanded, alarmed. ‘What did they say?’

  ‘Young Eamon drove down at lunchtime in the cart with the mending. When he returned he didn’t have the previous week’s mending with him and told Mrs Connor that it hadn’t been done because Mrs Sullivan was not herself.’

  ‘Why on earth didn’t Mrs Connor send word to me?’ Maura cried indignantly, determining to have a sharp word with the housekeeper on her return.

  ‘She wouldn’t like disturbing you when you were in the schoolroom and besides, I told her we were visiting this afternoon.’

  ‘Did Eamon say if a doctor was needed? Has Mrs Connor sent for one?’

  ‘No to both questions, but I thought it wouldn’t harm to have a doctor call by. I’ve already sent word to Rathdrum for Dr Pearse.’

  They had been cantering at a brisk pace across the parkland. ‘I don’t like it,’ she said filled with a terrible foreboding. ‘Ma’s never ill,’ and spurring her horse she began to gallop headlong towards the Lough.

  Any hopes Kieron might have had of his message to Dr Pearse being unnecessary were dispelled the instant they entered the house. Mary Sullivan had fallen in the kitchen, the bowl of eggs she had been carrying laying in smithereens at her side amid a mess of broken yolks.

  ‘What happened, Ma!’ Maura cried, running towards her. ‘Did you fall? Did you faint?’

  Her mother tried to speak but her face was strangely contorted and the only sounds she produced were gutturally inarticulate.

  ‘Let me carry her into the bedroom,’ Kieron said, lifting her in his arms. ‘Make some tea, Maura. Maybe that will revive her.’

  With shaking hands Maura poured cold water from a pitcher into a saucepan and set it on the hob. She didn’t need to wait for Dr Pearse’s arrival to know what was the matter with her mother. Mrs Connor’s predecessor at Ballacharmish had died of a stroke and she recognized the rictus of the mouth and the terrible inability to speak. ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, don’t let her die!’ she whispered to herself feverishly. ‘Oh, please, don’t let my mother die!’

  When she went into the bedroom with the mashed tea her mother was laying very still, propped up on pillows. Leaving the tea to cool Maura sat by her side, taking her hand between hers. Talking gently and lovingly, trying to reassure her mother that everything was going to be all right and that a doctor was on his way, she fought down her increasing panic.

  ‘Have some tea, Ma.’ Tenderly she tried to spoon the reviving liquid into her mother’s mouth, but her mother seemed unable to swallow and the tea dribbled down her chin on to her dress.

  Maura turned towards Kieron, tears shining in her eyes. ‘Holy Mother of God! Where is the doctor? Can you ride to Rathdrum, Kieron, and make sure he’s on his way?’

  Kieron strode towards the door to do as she suggested and as he opened it, he said in relief, ‘There’s no need. I can hear his horse.’

  Seconds later Rathdrum’s elderly doctor was in the room with them. Maura remained at her mother’s side. Kieron turned away towards the window. After what seemed to him to be an eternity, Dr Pearse stepped back from the bed, saying regrettably, ‘There’s nothing much I can be doing, I’m afraid. It’s apoplexy and she may come out of it grand or she may never be herself again.’

  Maura turned anguished eyes on Kieron. ‘I shall stay with her.’

  Kieron nodded. It was obvious that someone would have to stay with her mother, but for how long? What if Mary was ill and incapacitated for years?

  ‘I’ll ride back to Ballacharmish and tell his lordship what has happened,’ he said, wondering what Lord Clanmar’s reaction was going to be. He would not want Maura moving out of Ballacharmish and into a farmhouse, that was for sure.

  ‘Will you ask him to send me some clothes – and my books?’

  He nodded unhappily.

  On the realization that Lord Clanmar was to be informed of events Dr Pearse, who had been about to leave, swiftly changed his mind. ‘I’ll stay here while you send word,’ he said, hoping that his zealousness would not go unremarked and would come to his lordship’s ears.

  An hour later Lord Clanmar’s carriage rattled to a halt in the cobbled yard. Lord Clanmar eased himself stiffly out of the carriage, silently cursing the inflammation of his joints which now precluded him from riding.

  A flurried Dr Pearse hurried down to greet him. ‘Your lordship! ’Tis wonderful to see you looking so grand! A little stiffness in the joints, is there? Could I suggest…’

  ‘I’m here on account of Mrs Sullivan, not myself,’ Lord Clanmar said with ill-concealed annoyance. ‘Tell me, what is the situation?’

  It was exactly what Dr Pearse had been wondering. Everyone in Wicklow knew that his lordship was a broth of a landlord, but this concern for a tenant was ludicrous to the point of insanity and could only give rise to the most prurient of speculations.

  ‘She could live for many a long year,’ he said, wishing to heaven and all the saints that he knew what answer would best please. ‘On the other hand, Mrs Sullivan may be in the arms of her Maker by nightfall.’

  Lord Clanmar checked his rising vexation. Pearse was a well-meaning fool and he should have known better than to have asked. He looked across at Kieron who had accompanied the carriage on horseback. ‘Ask Maura to come down to me.’

  As Kieron did his bidding, Lord Clanmar stood in the centre of the plainly furnished, pin-neat living-room, his hands clasped behind his back. He knew very well what Maura would insist on doing, but it wasn’t practical. He hadn’t cared for her and educated her for nine years to have her return to near penury, acting the nurse to an incapacitated parent.

  When she hurried into the room he saw that she had been crying. ‘There, there, my pet,’ he said, putting his arthritic arm comfortingly around her and ignoring Dr Pearse’s incredulous, wide-eyed stare. ‘I already know what it is you want to do, but it isn’t what is best for your mother.’

  ‘But it is! I must be with her night and day! She needs me …’

  ‘She needs you to continue with the lifestyle that is yours at Ballacharmish,’ he said gently. ‘Such a lifestyle was always your mother’s crowning ambition for you, and it would break her heart to think that she herself had been the inadvertent cause of its cessation.’

  She stared at him, her eyes frantic with distress. What he was saying was true, but what other course of action was there?

  ‘She must be cared for,’ she said again, ‘and I am the best person in the world to care for her.’

  Lord Clanmar walked her over to a chair and gently pressed her down into it. ‘Now listen to me,’ he said tenderly. ‘You are not the best person, if your being here causes your mother additional mental agitation. What will be best for your mother will be if Ellen or Kitty care for her, and you visit her mornings and evenings.’

  ‘But can Ellen or Kitty be spared?’ she asked uncertainly. Both Ellen and Kitty had been in service as maids at Ballacharmish for over twenty years and she knew that Mrs Connor relied on them to set an example to the younger members of her staff.

  ‘Quite easily,’ Lord Clanmar said, uncaring of his housekeeper’s disciplinary problems. ‘Both Kitty and Ellen were in service at Ballacharmish when your mother was also in service. She knows them well and will find their presence a comfort. Your permanent presence here would only distress her.’

  She took a deep, steadying sigh. Although everything within her cried out that she should be the one to nurse her mother, she knew that what he said was true. If she did so, it would cause her mother more distress than comfort. She rose to her feet, saying unhappily, ‘I will go and tell Ma what arrangements are to be made.’

  When she did so, her mother’
s pressure on her hand told her that she had made the right decision. Lord Clanmar walked out of the farmhouse his shoulders slightly more stooped than when he had entered. It was a bad business. Mary Sullivan was not yet forty and he strongly doubted that she was going to live the year out. When she died, Maura would have no kin, or none that she knew of. He stepped into his carriage, his face sombre. He would write to his Dublin solicitor immediately. It was more important than ever that Maura’s future was safely secured.

  ‘A day in Dublin?’ Isabel said in happy surprise. ‘How lovely!’

  ‘I won’t be able to spend all the day with the two of you,’ her grandfather warned. ‘I’m going because I have business to conduct with my solicitor. However, we shall be able to have luncheon together at the Metropole Hotel and perhaps have a stroll in Phoenix Park and Miss Marlow has kindly agreed to accompany you both while you shop.’

  Isabel gave a sigh of exasperation. Whenever a chaperone was needed for a Dublin expedition Miss Marlow fulfilled that function. A resident of Dublin, she was an elderly family friend of Lord Clanmar’s and was always delighted to make herself of use to his granddaughter and ward in any way that she could.

  ‘It isn’t that I dislike Miss Marlow,’ Isabel said as her grandfather looked reprovingly at her. ‘It’s just that she twitters so.’

  ‘She doesn’t often enjoy the companionship of young people and so allowances must be made. We shall be setting off early so don’t stay up over late tonight reading.’

  This last remark was directed more at Maura than at Isabel and she smiled naughtily, saying, ‘If I promise not to read late tonight, can I bring my volume of Tennyson with me to read on the journey to Dublin?’

  ‘Only on condition that you allow me to read “The Revenge”, in a satisfyingly theatrical manner,’ Lord Clanmar said good-humouredly.

  Isabel groaned in mock anguish and as Maura giggled and he chuckled, he congratulated himself for the thousandth time on being an exceedingly lucky man. Unlike Miss Marlow and many of his peers, he was not enduring a lonely old age. He had made two unusual decisions in life and they had proved to be the best decisions he had ever made. He had his family around him and their worth was immeasurable.