An Embarrassment of Riches

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘Charlie is my second cousin. Over there is the restaurant where we celebrated his nineteenth birthday.’

  He was like a child at Christmas and his pleasure was infectious. ‘And there is the theatre where Adeline Patti sang when she first came to the city, and there is Perry’s, where the best canvas-back in all the world is served!’

  Only when they turned into Fifth Avenue and he said they were nearly home, did she first begin to suspect what awaited her.

  On either side of avenue were mansions, great ornate edifices with no unifying architectural feature but that of over-decoration and lushness. Some were built of marble and were reminiscent of Italian palazzi, others were turreted and pinnacled in the fashion of French châteaux. Domes and minarets, Tuscan arches and Gothic spires proliferated. Behind giant cast-iron gates could be glimpsed courtyards and fountains and Palladian doorways supported by fluted columns. To Maura, accustomed to the clean classic lines of Ballacharmish, everything seemed ridiculously excessive and out of proportion.

  At her side, Alexander was clenching and unclenching his hands in a fever of impatience. He was nearly home. His father had obviously been appraised of his arrival, In another few moments they would be face to face. He wondered if his father already knew of Genevre’s death. He wondered if his father would try and justify the terrible lies he had told. He wondered if he would be sorry.

  He squeezed his short-cut nails into his palms. His father had never been sorry for anything in his life and it wasn’t likely that he would begin to be now, which was why he was going to make him sorry.

  He looked across at Maura and with a wave of irritation wished that she looked less presentable. Where on earth had her silk-net snood come from? And how had she come to possess a dress that fitted her as if it had been made to measure by a skilled couturier? He wondered if he should warn her of what was about to take place and decided against it. If he did, she might bolt and he didn’t want anything going wrong now. Not when the moment of his revenge was so near at hand.

  ‘We’re here.’

  Maura had been looking in fascination at the stream of elegant equipages traversing the far side of the avenue. Now she turned her head and her lips parted in silent stupefaction. Before her were gigantic gates encrusted in gold-leaf. The carriage paused, waiting for entry, and two small black boys in blue-and-grey livery opened them. Beyond was a courtyard that would have done justice to a Medici.

  ‘You didn’t tell me …’ she said, looking up at what appeared to be a white Renaissance palace, the lower walls half-drowned in crimson La Belle Marsellaise roses. ‘I had no idea …’

  ‘It didn’t matter.’ His voice was terse, brusque with nervous anticipation. Would word have already reached his father about Maura? Would he be assuming, as the journalists had assumed, that she was one of Lord Powerscourt’s daughters? Another thought seized hold of him and he gasped out loud. If his father did not know of Genevre’s death, might he not think that the girl he had returned with was Genevre?

  ‘Are you all right?’ Maura was looking at him in concern. In the bright New York heat her dark blackberry-blue dress looked unexpectedly sophisticated, the colour intensifying the blue of her eyes.

  ‘Yes.’ He didn’t put a hand out to help her from the carriage. He didn’t want to touch her. She should have been Genevre. He wanted her to be Genevre so much that he didn’t know how he could possibly contain his longing. It seemed impossible to him that he could hurt so much and still be alive.

  Maura was aware that he was undergoing some great emotional upheaval and she made no comment on his discourtesy as she stepped down from the carriage and stood at his side.

  The giant doors facing them had opened and a butler had emerged and was walking swiftly down a flight of stone lion-flanked steps towards them.

  ‘Welcome home, Mr Alexander. Welcome home!’ he said effusively.

  Alexander had no intention of wasting time on exchanging pleasantries with the staff. ‘Is my father in?’ he asked abruptly, beginning to take the steps two at a time.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ At the tone of Alexander’s voice Haines’s effusiveness circumspectly vanished. ‘He was informed a half-hour ago of your arrival on board the Scotia. He is in the Chinese drawing-room …’

  Maura was making her own way up the steps in Alexander’s wake. Haines endeavoured to escort both of them simultaneously, hurrying down a few steps from Alexander’s side to Maura’s, and then running up the steps again to be alongside Alexander.

  Alexander was uncaring of his plight. At the top of the steps he turned, waiting impatiently for her. Beyond him, stretching away from the open doorway and into the vast entrance hall beyond, available members of the Karolyis staff had hastily assembled themselves into two goggling lines of greeting.

  It was an opportunity Alexander had no intention of missing. As Maura bemusedly joined him he gave a beaming smile to the maids and footmen. ‘Allow me to introduce my wife,’ he announced expansively, ‘Mrs Alexander Karolyis.’

  Thirty pairs of eyes nearly popped from thirty heads. Maura, remembering Ballacharmish, felt a surge of laughter bubbling up in her throat. Well might they stare. So would Mrs Connor and Ellen and Kitty have stared if Lord Clanmar’s son had arrived home and introduced a bride dressed in a plain cotton dress and without a single piece of adorning jewellery.

  As bobs and bows were made Alexander led the way towards the Chinese drawing-room and his waiting father. Maura’s rising nervousness at meeting the father-in-law she had been told nothing whatsoever about was offset by incredulity at the almost unbelievable ostentation. The vast, dome-like entrance-hall was of yellow marble and was crowned with serried ranks of chandeliers, each boasting at least a thousand pendants of cut glass. A huge stained-glass window depicted the kings of England and France on the Field of the Cloth of Gold and would have done justice to a cathedral.

  Beyond the entrance hall pale mahogany-panelled drawing-rooms stretched in vistas on either side, crowded with tapestries and statuary and what appeared to be genuine Renaissance mantelpieces. She glimpsed a cavernous dining-room of red marble complete with musicians’ gallery and a library whose walls and ceilings were drowning beneath frescoes of nymphs and gambolling satyrs.

  At the thought of living among such excessive ornateness her amusement verged on near hysteria. In every palatial room baroque, rococo and Gothic vied for supremacy. Everything was gilded, decorated, ornamented.

  Double door after double door was opened for them by footmen. Maura caught sight of a painting she was sure was Venetian and another that looked as if it had been pillaged from the Sistine chapel. As they approached yet another set of double doors Alexander raised his hand to the waiting footmen restrainingly. He wanted the doors to be flung open only when they were on the threshold. He wanted to be there without any warning, like the Demon King in a children’s play.

  As they paused before doors carved with rampant Chinese lions and fire-breathing dragons, Alexander took hold of Maura’s hand. This was it. This was the moment that would put an end to all his father’s dreams and aspirations. No aristocratic blood would now enter the Karolyis family, submerging for ever the memory of the peasant blood from which they had sprung. His father had lied and deceived in order that his daughter-in-law be superior in family to Genevre. And now he was going to introduce him to the daughter-in-law those lies and deceit had obtained for him.

  He squeezed Maura’s hand tight. ‘Ready?’ he asked her, brushing a tumbled lock of hair away from his brow with his free hand.

  She nodded, wondering why he was so excessively nervous. His father had wanted him to return to America a married man, and he had done so. Surely he could be expecting nothing else but approbation?

  Alexander gave a slight nod in the direction of the footmen. The doors were flung open.

  Walking forward, her hand still clasped in Alexander’s, Maura’s first impression was of a sea of blue-and-white porcelain and of a Chinese carpet so exquisite an
d delicate in colour and design that it redeemed all the previous garish monstrosities at a stroke. Her second impression was that her father-in-law was not remotely the man she had expected him to be.

  She had assumed him to be aged and frail, a man anxious to see his son married before death cheated him of the pleasure. He was not remotely frail and he looked to be no older than forty-five or fifty.

  Alexander walked a few feet into the room with her and then halted. His father rose from the ebony-framed chair in which he had been sitting and remained standing, making no move towards him. With a sudden rush of disquiet Maura was reminded of a confrontation she had once witnessed in Killaree’s bohereen between Ned Murphy and Mr Fitzgerald.

  Ever since Alexander had first spoken to her, Maura had never known what to expect next. She did not know what to expect now. She imagined that Alexander would introduce her as his wife. Instead, he said baldly in a voice she barely recognized: ‘She’s dead. Genevre is dead.’

  Victor Karolyis held his son’s eyes unflinchingly. He hadn’t known and his first reaction was annoyance that his information service had failed him.

  Alexander knew that if he moved one step further towards his father all control would desert him. All he wanted was to put his hands around his father’s neck and to throttle him. Shaking with suppressed emotion, his nostrils pinched and white, his voice raw with hatred and with pain, he said: ‘You saw to it that none of my letters reached her, didn’t you? That none of her letters reached me. And then you told her I was engaged to one of Powerscourt’s daughters. You told the whole city that I was engaged to one of Powerscourt’s daughters!’

  No expression whatsoever crossed Victor’s face. He had expected this scene for a long time and he was prepared for it.

  ‘It was for your own good,’ he said imperturbably. ‘It would have been a deplorable marriage.’

  Alexander could contain himself no longer. With a primitive howl he leapt towards his father. As he hurled himself on him Victor staggered backwards beneath his weight. A table went flying, Ming vases crashing to the ground.

  ‘You murdered her!’ Alexander sobbed, his hands around his father’s throat. ‘You murdered her, God damn you!’

  As Victor kicked out, trying to free himself, both of them fell, rolling and flailing over the shattered pieces of china.

  Maura gathered her stunned senses together and flew to the door, wrenching it open, shouting at the stupefied footmen for help. They stared past her at the kicking, struggling, rolling figures and not knowing whether their employer was the victim or the aggressor, and whether they would be thanked or dismissed for intervening, they turned on their heels and ran to inform someone more senior of the fracas.

  With a cry of frustration Maura ran back into the drawing-room. Alexander was now astride his father’s still struggling figure, his hands tighter than ever around his throat. ‘She wasn’t good enough for you, was she? You wanted a daughter-in-law with a title. A European aristocrat! Someone with a name in the Almanach de Gotha!’

  Maura flung herself on her knees, tugging at one of his arms, trying to make him break his hold.

  Victor was purple in the face, his tongue beginning to protrude, his eyes bulging.

  ‘Well, let me tell you what your lies and deceit have achieved!’

  Maura felt as if she were two different people. One of her could hear every terrible word that Alexander was saying. She had been deceived as cruelly as Alexander had apparently been deceived. He hadn’t married her to please a father who was dying, or because he needed her or had fallen in love with her. He had married her out of a need for revenge. Out of hatred. And for the moment it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she should succeed in breaking Alexander’s hold on his father’s throat.

  ‘Here she is!’ he was shouting. ‘This is your new daughter-in-law! An Irish peasant.’ With each word his fingers pressed harder on his father’s windpipe. ‘An … illegitimate … illiterate … Roman Catholic … Irish peasant!’

  Maura didn’t hesitate. Her head darted low over his hands and she sank her teeth so deep into his flesh that she tasted blood.

  In the next split second Haines, with an army of blue-and-grey liveried figures at his heels, burst into the room; Victor Karolyis rolled free as Alexander’s grasp was broken; and as Alexander realized that Maura’s action had saved his father’s life he delivered a blow to her still-bent head that sent her sprawling on the floor, half-senseless.

  Half a dozen footmen hurried to her aid. Her head and shoulders were raised from the floor; she was proffered water; a linen handkerchief to wipe the blood from her mouth.

  Dizzily she could see Alexander’s father staggering to his feet, clutching at his throat, gasping and retching for breath.

  Haines and a squad of footmen had seized hold of Alexander by the arms and were trying to drag him from the room.

  ‘I want Ginnie’s letters!’ he shouted as he struggled against their restraining grasp, his fists clenched, blood oozing from her teethmarks and dripping on to the pastel coloured carpet.

  His father tottered towards the ebony-framed chair and fell down into it.

  ‘They’re burned,’ he croaked savagely. ‘Destroyed.’

  A footman pressed a glass of brandy into his hand, another began to nervously gather up the shards of priceless china.

  There was truth in Victor’s voice and as Alexander realized that he was never going to know what Genevre had written to him, that he was never going to even see her handwriting again, all the fight left him. His grief was too great for his fury. Unashamedly and unrestrainedly he began to weep. Sensing his capitulation Haines and the footmen cautiously eased their hold of him.

  His father swallowed the brandy with painful difficulty and, indicating Maura with a contemptuous movement of his hand, said, ‘Is this girl your wife? Is she the whore you’ve married?’

  Despite the singing pain in her head outraged fury propelled Maura to her feet. Her Irishness had been referred to as if it was the world’s biggest insult; her illegitimacy had been paraded; her faith sneered at; she had been accused of illiteracy when she was quite sure that her education was equal to anything that Alexander had ever received; and now, to crown everything, she was being referred to as a whore!

  ‘How dare you speak of me in such a manner?’ she spat at Victor Karolyis, her eyes blazing, her chest heaving. ‘You seem to be under the impression that the Irish are the lowest of the low! Let me tell you that even the most illiterate of Irish peasants has better manners than the manners you and your son are displaying!’

  For the first time Victor looked at her, and he knew instantly that Alexander had made a huge, colossal, irredeemable mistake. He sucked in another lungful of blessed air and turned his gaze towards his son, who was winding a handkerchief around his bleeding hand.

  ‘So you thought you would make me pay, did you?’ he rasped. ‘You thought you would marry a scummy emigrant and shame me. And then I suppose you thought you would pay her off cheaply and forget about her?’ It wasn’t often that Victor laughed but he began to laugh mirthlessly now. ‘Open your eyes, for Christ’s sake! Does she look as though she’s dumb enough to be paid off and forgotten about?’

  Alexander looked across at Maura. Her heavy dark hair was still encased loosely at the back of her neck in her snood. Her high-necked, blackberry-coloured dress looked even more well cut than it had aboard the Scotia. She looked every inch a lady and he realized with a shock that was almost a physical blow, that she was a lady.

  Incredibly he temporarily forgot about his father. He breathed in harshly.

  ‘Who are you?’ he demanded, all his previous doubts returning in full flood. ‘Why were you in steerage? Why the devil did you marry me when you knew nothing about me?’

  The footmen were staring from one to the other, mouths agape. Furious at how much had already been carelessly said in their presence, Victor Karolyis rounded on Haines. ‘Out!’ he hissed hoarsely. Haines reta
ined his expression of mask-like imperturbability with difficulty and led his inferiors from the room.

  When the double doors closed behind them Maura looked at father and son. Then she said with crushing poise, ‘My name is Maura Sullivan and I was born in Killaree, County Wicklow.’

  ‘And you’re a Catholic?’ Victor Karolyis grated, still fingering his throat on which welts were now rising.

  ‘I’m a Roman Catholic and I’m illegitimate.’

  ‘But you’re not illiterate?’

  It was so obvious she wasn’t that Maura didn’t even trouble to reply. Instead she said icily, ‘When I was eight I was taken into the home of Lord Clanmar to be a companion to his granddaughter. We were both educated by Lord Clanmar until his death, two months ago.’

  She turned her head towards Alexander, her eyes holding his. ‘I was in steerage because at Lord Clanmar’s death I was left destitute. And I married you because … because …’

  For the first time her voice faltered. It was impossible to say that she had married him because she had been confounded by desire for him; because she had believed an instant bond had sprung up between them; that he had needed her and that she had wanted with all her heart to respond to that need.

  She said instead: ‘Because it seemed to be the most sensible thing that I could do.’

  For a long moment they stared at each other and then Alexander suddenly began to laugh. It wasn’t the bitter, mirthless laughter which his father had so recently given vent to. It was genuine and from the heart. He had been caught. Bamboozled. And it didn’t matter. His father was still socially destroyed. No education in the world could erase the fact that Maura had been born a peasant and that she was a Catholic and illegitimate.

  He stretched out his uninjured hand towards her, not caring that it was obvious he wasn’t going to be able to get rid of her as easily as he had thought. She was beautiful and bright and he liked her. He liked her a lot. As her hand slid into his he remembered that they had a marriage to consummate. Suddenly it seemed a very pleasant prospect.