An Embarrassment of Riches

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘The money will be paid as agreed. It might be best if the captain safeguards it for you until we reach New York. Shall I ask him to do so?’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  The money was the least of all her concerns. She had forgotten all about it and now that he had mentioned it again she knew that she didn’t want to take it. It wasn’t necessary. She wasn’t marrying him for money. She was marrying him because he so transparently needed her. She was marrying him because although she knew nothing whatsoever about him, she had fallen head over heels in love with him.

  It was too late to tell him about the money. He was striding away from her and the obsequious seaman was again approaching. As he led the way back below deck to steerage her overriding thought wasn’t of her impending marriage, or the bridegroom who was such a mystery to her. It was of the coffee she had so foolishly never poured and tasted.

  That night she lay awake for hour after restless hour. She wasn’t the only one who was sleepless. Babies cried. Women gossiped in low murmurs. Those who could not tolerate the ship’s slightest pitch and roll vomited bile into buckets and bowls.

  Maura stared up at the creaking beams above her head. What on earth would Lord Clanmar have said if he could have foreseen the situation? She thought of Alexander; of the fierce intelligence in his grey eyes; of his obvious good breeding. Lord Clanmar would have liked him. And her mother? Maura smiled to herself in the darkness. Her mother would have admired his carefully casual elegance, an elegance that didn’t in the slightest detract from his almost aggressive behaviour. And she would have appreciated his having the means to travel first-class.

  She turned on her side, trying to sleep. She wondered what his father would be like. If he would like her. If the family life that now so miraculously awaited her in New York would be anything at all like the family life she had enjoyed at Ballacharmish.

  The next morning, as she did her best to eat an unappetizing breakfast, a ship’s officer entered steerage, seeking her out.

  ‘Miss Sullivan?’

  She nodded. She had never seen an officer in steerage before and from the expression of distaste on his face she suspected it was the first time he had ever had business there.

  ‘Captain Neills would like a word with you, Miss Sullivan.’

  The woman on her left dropped her spoon into her bowl with an astonished clatter. The woman on her right choked on the strong tea she was drinking.

  Maura rose to her feet, aware that the word ‘Captain’ was spreading among her fellow passengers like wildfire.

  ‘Captain Neills has asked that you bring your possessions with you, Miss Sullivan.’

  Maura hesitated, looking around at her companions. Although wary of her because of the quality of her dress and her nob speech, they all had been friendly towards her. Now it was obvious to them that she was being singled out and offered more comfortable accommodation. And they would think that it was because she was prostituting herself. Suddenly it mattered to her very, very much what was thought of her by her impoverished travelling companions.

  ‘I would prefer to leave my possessions here for the time being,’ she said quietly but firmly.

  The officer looked disconcerted but Maura had no intention of changing her mind. She had begun the voyage in steerage and no matter what incredible events were now about to take place, empathy with those she was travelling with decreed that she finish the voyage with them.

  She walked from steerage in the officer’s wake, knowing that her reputation was in tatters. She wondered what they would all say when she told them that she was about to be married. She wondered if anyone would believe her.

  The officer led her what seemed to be the length of the ship and into a well-appointed cabin in which Alexander, Captain Neills and a bewildered priest, were sitting. They rose as she entered and Alexander strode towards her.

  He didn’t take her arm, or touch her, but he turned to face them with her at his side, saying laconically, ‘Miss Maura Sullivan, gentlemen. My bride-to-be.’

  It was an incredible moment, one that Maura knew she would never forget as long as she lived. The captain moved from behind his giant mahogany desk and shook her hand, looking at her dazedly, as if she had materialized out of thin air.

  ‘And Father Mulcahy, who is to marry us.’

  Next to Alexander, who, though not heavily built, had a decidedly whippy look to him and exuded a sense of power under restraint, and the big and burly captain, the priest looked diminutive. He shook her hand perplexedly, mindful of the fat wad of notes that he had been given; notes that the Church would be able to put to good use among the poor of New York.

  ‘Bless you, my child,’ he said sincerely, wondering how and when Mr Karolyis and his fiancée had met; wondering why she had been travelling in steerage with the emigrants; wondering why they wanted to marry now, in such unseemly haste.

  ‘I have been explaining to your husband-to-be that as he is not a Roman Catholic, he will have to make a solemn promise agreeing that all children born of your union will be raised as Roman Catholics.’

  Captain Neills noted her look of startled surprise and grimaced. She hadn’t known that her husband-to-be was not a Roman Catholic. He would stake a year’s pay on that fact.

  Maura was too thrown by the mention of children to make an issue of the revelation that Alexander was a Protestant. All of a sudden it brought home to her the intimacy she was about to embark on. When she married the stranger at her side she would be obliged to go to bed with him. How could she possibly do it? She knew nothing whatsoever about him. The sum total of their relationship was a dozen stilted sentences.

  She drew in a deep breath, about to make her apologies; about to flee from the room shamefaced.

  Alexander said, ‘Father Mulcahy has kindly agreed to marry us at ten o’clock in the morning here, in the captain’s cabin.’

  She looked across at him and her knees weakened. She remembered the expression in his eyes when he had looked down at her and asked for her help. She remembered the throb in his dark, rich voice when he had said that he needed to marry her. If going to bed meant touching and holding and loving, then of course she could go to bed with him. When he had walked towards her only a few moments ago, turning and introducing her, she had felt a spasm of disappointment because he had not taken her by the hand. She wanted to touch him and to be touched by him. Previously ignorant of sexual desire, from the moment she had first laid eyes on him she had been confounded by it.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, dry-mouthed. Then, in case her extraordinary husband-to-be was under the impression she was travelling in steerage accompanied by a mountain of luggage, she said, ‘I have no other clothes with me. Only the gown I am wearing.’

  Captain Neills blanched, certain now that in the words of Stratford’s immortal bard, mischief was afoot. There could have been an explanation for her travelling in steerage with the emigrants, though he couldn’t easily think what it could be. However, there could be no possible explanation for her travelling minus luggage. Not if she were any sort of a lady.

  The priest was looking bewildered, the bridegroom unfazed. He said with a disinterest that shocked even the priest, ‘The gown you are wearing will be perfectly suitable.’

  It was Captain Neills who came to her rescue. ‘I will enquire of a couple of my lady passengers and see whether or not a more suitable gown might be borrowed for the occasion, Miss Sullivan.’ With rising embarrassment Maura thanked him. What had Alexander Karolyis told him about their relationship? Did Captain Neills know that they had only spoken to each other for the first time the previous day? Did he realize the oddness of what was about to take place? And Father Mulcahy? How on earth had Alexander persuaded him to perform a wedding ceremony at which no banns had been called? A ceremony that would join in Holy Matrimony a Catholic and a Protestant?

  ‘A cabin has been prepared for you in first-class accommodation, Miss Sullivan,’ Captain Neills was saying. ‘A steward will see that y
our belongings are transferred.’

  She said politely, avoiding Alexander Karolyis’s eye, ‘Thank you, Captain, but that won’t be necessary. I will be completing the voyage in the accommodation in which I began it.’

  Three pairs of eyes stared at her disbelievingly. The faint niggle of worry that had disturbed Alexander the previous day now became an avalanche. She was too assured, too articulate. He remembered the ease with which she had used words such as disorientating and gross. Then he remembered the way Powerscourt and his friends had laughed at the way the Irish peasantry cheekily aped their betters. ‘Born mimics’ Powerscourt had said of them. It was a common enough ability and although disconcerting, made her no less suitable for his needs.

  He dismissed the doubts that had, for a moment, nearly swamped him and said irritably, ‘It would be much more convenient …’

  ‘I would rather remain where I am,’ she interrupted, her voice low and well-modulated. And firm.

  Captain Neills was beginning to enjoy himself. He wondered when Mr Alexander Karolyis had last had his wishes thwarted and how he would deal with the matter.

  He shot him a glance and saw Alexander’s face tighten before he said with a slight shrug of a shoulder and apparent disinterest, ‘As you wish. I will meet you here tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.’

  It was a dismissal and the most curt goodbye from a groom to his bride on the eve of their wedding that Captain Neills had ever heard, or ever hoped to hear.

  Even Maura was slightly disconcerted and he again came to her aid, saying kindly, ‘Second-Lieutenant Harringway will escort you back to steerage, Miss Sullivan.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Maura looked across at Alexander expectantly. Surely he would want to speak to her alone for a few moments? He didn’t move and didn’t look at her. He was staring at the porthole beyond the captain’s desk, deep in thought, his eyes almost blind with pain.

  She said awkwardly, ‘Goodbye, Captain. Goodbye, Father Mulcahy.’

  She paused, looking again in Alexander’s direction. It was unthinkable to say, ‘Goodbye, Alexander’, when she had never, as yet, addressed him by his Christian name. It was equally unthinkable to address him as ‘Mr Karolyis’, in front of the man who was arranging for them to marry, and the man who was to perform the ceremony.

  Deeply unhappy she turned and left the room. When would they be able to talk to each other? Surely he must be as curious about her, and her background, as she was about him? Perhaps he would follow her from the room. Perhaps they would talk on the second-class deck as they had done yesterday.

  The door behind her remained closed. No footsteps followed in her wake. She tried to conquer her disappointment by telling herself that she was to blame. He had desired that she move into first-class accommodation and if she had done so they could have talked on the first-class deck or in the first-class lounge. As it was, by electing to remain in steerage, she had made it impossible for any such conversations to take place.

  Her return to her own quarters was met with a silence that was becoming increasingly hostile. Emigrants weren’t invited by the captain to have a few words with him. Emigrants didn’t have nobs shinning down stanchions on to steerage deck-space in order that they could pay their respects. Something funny was going on and because they were unsure as to what it was, they avoided, her with an instinct ages old.

  As she sat for the rest of the day in lonely isolation, the irony was not lost on Maura. She had elected to stay with her fellows in steerage because she had felt a sense of loyalty towards them. It was now obvious that her sense of loyalty was not reciprocated and that she had turned her back on the blissful comfort and privacy of a first-class cabin for no very good reason.

  Only when Second-Lieutenant Harringway appeared again early next morning, an ice-blue silk garment over his arm, a posy of artificial flowers in his hand, did the atmosphere change.

  ‘God save us, and what’s happening now?’ someone declared, voicing the mystification of every woman and child present.

  When the officer had handed over the garment and posy to Maura and hastily made his retreat, they swarmed around her, their comments caustic, certain that she had been prostituting herself and that the dress and flowers were payment for services she had rendered.

  ‘It’s a sin and a shame! It’s a bloody disgrace!’ someone cried out in Irish.

  Maura shook her head, determined not to have the most incredible, the most wonderful day of her life spoilt by smutty misunderstandings.

  ‘I’m to be married this morning,’ she said, lapsing into the tongue of her childhood.

  They were immediately silenced, not so much by her words as by her country Gaelic.

  ‘And who is the groom?’ a voice ventured when they had recovered from their surprise.

  ‘Why, it’s the captain to be sure,’ someone else riposted.

  There was much laughter and Maura said, almost as if she could barely believe it herself: ‘I’m to marry the young man who shinned down from the upper deck yesterday.’

  Exclamations of, ‘I told you so’ran through the crush pressing for a clearer view of the blue silk garment and the artificial flowers.

  ‘Is it runnin’away together the two of you are then?’ a woman at the forefront of the crowd asked.

  Maura knew exactly what scenario her questioner was imagining. An Irish girl in service. The son of the house. It was the only obvious explanation for her ability to speak English with an aristocratic accent and for her to be marrying a man travelling first-class.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, knowing that no-one would believe the truth even if she told them it.

  Immediately she was deluged with wishes of good luck. The wedding gown was reverently admired. Although there was no privacy in which she could change, it no longer seemed to matter. Willing hands helped her out of her blackberry-blue dress and into her borrowed, ice-blue wedding-gown.

  Maura held her breath as it slithered over her head. Would it fit? Would the bodice be too low? Would any of her eager helpers accidentally soil it?

  There was no mirror but immediately the gown had settled on her hips she knew that it flattered her to perfection. Although the second-lieutenant had shrunk from the task of carrying a crinoline hoop into steerage with him, the gown had a stiff underskirt and the skirt fell, bell-like, to her ankles. The sleeves were full and puffed, tightening narrowly below the elbow. The neckline was fashionably low, but not so low as to cause her embarrassment.

  She had brushed her hair until it shone and instead of wearing it in a thick coil at the nape of her neck had twisted it into a high, fashionable French chignon.

  ‘You’ll do him proud, Maura,’ Rosie O’Hara said to her admiringly.

  ‘She looks like a princess, and isn’t that the truth?’ another one declared, as proud as if the vision were of her own doing.

  There were white roses and gardenias in the artificial posy and Maura plucked a gardenia free and tucked it into the pleat of her chignon.

  Having given her time to change into her borrowed bridal finery, the second-lieutenant reappeared. His instructions were to escort her to where the captain and Father Mulcahy and her groom were waiting for her. He had been sailing the Atlantic for nearly ten years and he could never remember being assigned a more bizarre task. Weddings had taken place before aboard the Scotia both in first-class and in steerage, but never before had a first-class passenger married a steerage emigrant. It was beyond belief. Fantastic. Especially when the first-class passenger was a man whose name was a byword for unbelievable riches.

  He looked at her and stopped short. Emigrant she might be, but she was certainly no common one. Like Captain Neills, he was certain that there was far more to the wedding about to take place than met the eye. Gravely he proffered her his gold-braided sleeved arm. With exquisite dignity, she took it. All around them in the gloom was the most unimaginable stench and squalor and like creatures from another world they traversed it and left it behind them.

&nbs
p; As they walked the companion-ways towards the for’ard part of the ship he didn’t speak to her, because he didn’t know what he could possibly say.

  She, too, was silent, her heart beating in sharp, slamming strokes that she could feel even in her fingertips. Was she really doing this? Was she really about to marry a man she knew nothing whatsoever about? She remembered the pain in his eyes. The pain she was confident she could ease. Her fingers tightened imperceptibly on the officer’s arm. If only Isabel was with her. If only it was Kieron at her side, about to give her away. Even better, if only it had been Lord Clanmar.

  They were at the door emblazoned by Captain Neills’name in brass lettering. Perhaps he wouldn’t be inside the room. Perhaps Captain Neills would be waiting to tell her that no wedding would take place; that it had all been a misunderstanding; that Alexander was sick and not responsible for his actions. The second-lieutenant knocked on the door. Captain Neills opened it. Beyond him she could see Father Mulcahy, his stole around his neck. And Alexander.

  He turned as she entered the room. At the expression on his face she was filled with a dizzying moment of pure elation. Whatever he had expected, it had not been a bride in a shimmering, ice-blue silk wedding-gown; a bride with a posy of roses and gardenias in her hands and a gardenia in her hair. For one brief, precious moment she could see her own beauty reflected back at her in his eyes. He was dumbfounded by her. Dazzled by her. And then a shutter came down over his eyes and he turned away from her, facing Father Mulcahy.

  With the blood pounding in her ears and her heart racing, she took her place at his side, confident of the future. Confident that she could make him love her as she already loved him.

  Chapter Ten

  Alexander stared stony-eyed at the little priest, fighting to keep his emotions under control. He was marrying. He was about to utter all the vows he had so long ago determined he would utter only to Genevre. He had thought his heart incapable of feeling any further grief. He had been wrong. As the priest began to pray in Latin he felt that he was being crucified. Why couldn’t it have been Genevre at his side? Genevre with her impish eyes and soft laugh. Genevre who was the other half of his very self.