An Embarrassment of Riches (38 page)

‘You really do know your way around, don't you? What on earth is a chicken-pot pie?'

‘A chicken-pot pie has a pastry you could die for. Now tell me about this man of yours. What is so special about him, apart from his great, slashing fortune, that had you marrying him within days of setting eyes on him?'

Maura forgot all about the chicken-pot pie. How could she possibly explain to Kieron what had happened to her when she had first seen Alexander? How could she explain to him how handsome he had looked; the sense of assurance he had exuded; the overwhelming desire he had instantly aroused in her?

She said simply, ‘The moment I saw him, I wanted him.'

‘Jesus, Maura!' He looked around hastily to make sure that no–one had overheard her.

She flushed rosily. ‘I'm sorry, but you asked me and I can't think of how else to explain it.'

Kieron took a deep, steadying swig of beer. He knew from experience that some women were as carnal as men, given the chance, but never had he expected to hear such an admission from a girl who had been as carefully reared as Maura had been.

He looked across at her, genuinely shocked. There was nothing cheap or carnal in her face or demeanour. Her shining dark hair was swept away from her face with tortoiseshell combs and lay heavily and lustrously in the nape of her neck, constrained by a fine, silk-netted snood. Her mauve silk dress was demurely high at the throat and tight at the wrist, the colour intensifying the violet-blue of her eyes. She was looking at him ingenuously, as candidly, as she had always done.

He put down his beer, feeling ashamed of himself. He had asked her an unforgivably personal question and she had answered with simple truthfulness. Hard on the heels of his shame came bitter, burning regret. He should have asked her to marry him when the temptation to do so had been upon him. He could have taken her as his wife to Waterford. They could be living as man and wife now, in New York. He knew now, in a moment of the same overpowering clarity as she herself had experienced aboard the
Scotia
, that he would never find another woman so right for him; so meant for him. And he had let her slip through his fingers.

He said neutrally, not letting a flicker of the emotion he was feeling show, ‘Your life must have changed beyond all imagination. Clanmar was wealthy, but not in the way Karolyis is wealthy. Are you not going to find such excessive wealth a burden, sweetheart?'

From anyone else it would have been a strange question. Coming from Kieron she understood perfectly. Like her he had seen at first-hand the moral degeneracy that wealth so often brought in its wake. The great land-owners of Ireland were wealthy men and Ireland had bled because of it. During the famine years there had been few who had given succour to their starving tenants; even now families were being evicted from their homes and scraps of land in order to make way for sheep. All in order that the rich could become richer.

She said quietly and with utter confidence, ‘Alexander is no Bicester. He's going to be able to transform thousands and thousands of lives with his wealth.'

Kieron cocked an eyebrow. ‘And has he told you of how he will do it?'

‘No, because until yesterday he didn't know that the Karolyis millions would ever be his.'

Kieron's eyebrow rose quizzically higher.

‘When Alexander was previously in love, his father threatened that if he married, he would be cut off without a dollar. In marrying me he obviously ran the same risk.'

The chicken-pot pies arrived and Kieron plunged his fork into the golden pastry, saying with a sense of relief that he didn't understand, ‘Then that explains what was puzzling me. Isn't this the most glorious pie you've ever tasted? It almost makes crossing the Atlantic worthwhile.'

They talked of Isabel and of how she did not sound to be enjoying her new lifestyle in London in the slightest degree; they talked of Ballacharmish and of how impossible it was to understand how any man could be its master and not even pay it the most cursory of visits; and they talked of Kieron's immediate job prospects.

‘The demand for land-agents is thin on the ground in New York,' he said with a wry grin. ‘I'm going to have to turn my hand to something else.'

Maura thought of the Irish labouring on the site of the new cathedral. Kieron could do such work easily enough but he would hate being confined in the centre of the teeming city. With a pang she realized that it was impossible to think of Kieron remaining for long in New York. He had been accustomed all his life to walking miles a day, a dog at his heels. A job in New York would stifle him.

She said tentatively, ‘You could work with horses. Perhaps manage a stud farm …'

She thought of Tarna and knew immediately that Alexander would hate the idea of Kieron at Tarna. But there was Henry. Henry owned racehorses. Where did he keep them? Wherever it was, it surely couldn't be far away. Perhaps he even owned a stud farm of his own. If not it was about time that he did so. He could afford it, it would give him great pleasure, and Kieron could manage it for him.

‘There's Kentucky,' Kieron was saying thoughtfully. ‘Next to Ireland, Kentucky-bred horses are the finest in the world. Perhaps I should try my luck there.'

‘But not just yet,' Maura said quickly. ‘I don't want you leaving New York just yet. In the little while you've been in the city, you've come to know it far better than I have. I want you to show it to me. Whereabouts is your lodging-house? Is it near the Bowery?'

There was an odd expression in his hazel eyes as he pushed his cleaned plate away from him. ‘It is, and what would you be knowing of the Bowery?'

‘I have friends in the Bowery. People I travelled with aboard the
Scotia.
'

‘You'll not be able to be friends with them now, I'm thinking,' he said drily. ‘You may not be aware of it, sweetheart, but even in here your finery has caused quite a stir.'

‘But I'm not dressed in finery!' Maura protested. ‘I purposely didn't wear pearls or a bracelet or …'

His eyes gleamed amusement. ‘Maybe not, but your dress is of silk, your gloves are lace and although I can't see them at the moment, I've no doubt that your boots are of the finest kid.'

Maura instinctively moved her feet a little further beneath the bench. Her boots were not only of kid, they were also exotically dyed the exact shade of her dress.

‘I would still like to visit the Bowery,' she said stubbornly. ‘The people I travelled with knew of my change of fortune. They didn't hold it against me aboard the
Scotia
and I'm sure that they won't do so now that we are all in New York.'

He finished his beer and regarded her steadily for a moment or two. ‘You're right,
álainn
,' he said at last, and again she was sure that there was far more going on in his head than he was saying. ‘You should know of streets other than the likes of Fifth Avenue. If you want to pay the Bowery a visit, why don't we do so now?'

‘I'd like to,' she said, her mouth curving in a deep smile of satisfaction.

When they left the café he didn't suggest they wave down a hansom cab and she had the sense not to suggest that he did so. For one thing she doubted that he would have the price of a hansom on him, and for another she knew very well why he had agreed to take her with him to the Bowery. He wanted her to see the conditions in which their fellow Irish were living. Knowing how unbelievably wealthy her lifestyle now was, he wanted her to remain in touch with reality and with her roots. And travelling by hansom to an area of deep poverty was not the way to do so.

She knew that he believed he was going to shock her inexpressibly and she was well aware that her childhood experience of rural poverty was going to be no preparation for the horrors of city slum life. Nevertheless she believed that she was prepared. Lord Clanmar had never hidden unpleasant aspects of life from either her or Isabel. They knew of the existence of Dublin's rookeries, and they had both read Charles Dickens's account of his visit to the slums of New York some twenty years ago.

What she was totally unprepared for was the Bowery's disorientating nearness. One minute glossy chestnuts were trotting past them, elegant carriages in their wake, the next they were among narrow, filthy alleyways, hemmed in by towering tenements, their façades pock-marked with broken window-casements and pitch-black gaping doorways.

The smell of stale urine and human faeces was so strong that she gagged. Half-naked children swarmed amid the garbage. A rat ran down a channel leading to an open drain. And only a short walk away mansions of High Renaissance splendour lined Fifth Avenue, liveried postilions adorned gold-decorated carriages and red carpets were rolled out across the sidewalk so that exquisitely shod feet should not be even slightly soiled. It was beyond belief. Beyond all imagining.

She said unsteadily, ‘You knew I could not possibly know what to expect and you were right. How can such slums exist cheek by jowl with such richness? It doesn't make sense.'

‘It certainly doesn't make sense from a health point of view,' Kieron said grimly. ‘There are outbreaks of yellow fever and cholera yearly and the rich live in fear of them.'

‘Then why don't they do something?' she demanded indignantly; lifting her skirt as they picked their way around a particularly noxious puddle. ‘There wouldn't be any such outbreaks if there were proper drains!'

‘The rich do do something,' he said taking her by the arm and steering her towards a doorway thick with grubby-faced children. ‘Whenever outbreaks of disease occur they leave the city for their country homes on the banks of the Hudson.'

Maura thought of Tarna and wondered if Victor Karolyis had fled there whenever cholera or yellow fever had broken out.

The staircase he was leading her up in near darkness was treacherously holed and broken. ‘Is this where you are living?' she asked, hardly able to comprehend it. ‘Is this your lodging-house?'

‘No. I live near the Bowery, not in it. But it was the Bowery you were wanting to visit and I know people here, just as you do.'

They were on a pitch-dark, handkerchief-sized landing. From behind closed doors came the noise of babies crying, old men coughing, pans clattering.

‘Why is there no light?' she asked bewildered. ‘Why are all the windows covered?'

‘There are no windows,' he said briefly, knocking on one of the doors.

Before she could make any reply the door was opened and Maura was relieved to see that there were some windows elsewhere in the building, however inadequate. In the dim light she could see a girl about her own age and beyond her a room crammed with straw mattresses. On some, hunched figures were sitting, on others two or three figures lay together, trying to sleep.

‘Why, it's grand it is to see you again!' the girl was exclaiming to Kieron. Her eyes widened as she noted Maura and her silk dress and lace gloves.

‘My companion is kin,' Kieron said easily. ‘She's fallen on her feet in New York but it's no reason to stand in awe of her. Maura, will you please be meeting Katy O'Farrell. Katy and her family were tenants of Bicester's till he decided his land would be more profitable turned over to sheep.'

‘And Mr Sullivan made sure that his lordship paid out fares to America in recompense,' Katy said beamingly to Maura, ushering them both into the fetid room.

The room was now a flurry of activity. Sleeping figures were prodded into wakefulness. Those that had been sitting rose to their feet, eager to shake hands with Kieron and to take a closer look at Maura.

‘My ma and pa,' Katy was saying to Maura, pushing two prematurely elderly figures to the front of the crush. ‘And my sister Bridget, and my sister Caitlin.'

Two girls a little older than Katy came shyly forward, bobbing to Maura as they had always bobbed to their betters.

‘Less of that now,' a male voice called out censoriously. ‘This is Americky. There'll be no bobbing and pulling of forelocks now.'

The two girls flushed scarlet and Kieron slipped his arm lightly around Maura's shoulder, saying, ‘Sure, and we're all in agreement with you there, Patrick.'

Mollified, Patrick O'Farrell stepped forward.

‘Patrick O'Farrell,' he said, shaking Maura's hand crushingly. He was a tall, loose-limbed, red-headed young man and he carried himself with the same easy boldness that characterized Kieron. ‘My sisters are
eejits
, God help them. Let me introduce you in a proper manner. There are only six of us O'Farrells here. The other five families who share with us are Shaughnessy, O'Hara, O'Brien, Pearse and Flaherty.'

‘I sailed aboard the
Scotia
with a young woman by the name of Rosie O'Hara,' Maura said, aware that she was still being eyed with more deference than welcome and trying to remedy matters. ‘She was from Wexford and had a little boy, Jamesie …'

For the next few minutes she could hardly hear herself speak. Rosie O'Hara and her husband and child were the fellow tenants about whom Patrick had been speaking.

‘Peader O'Hara is out looking for work and Rosie and the child are out seeking a breath of fresh air,' a woman with a baby at her breast said informatively.

There was a murmur of regret that there couldn't be a grand reunion between the O'Haras and Kieron's fine friend.

Maura's delight at having so easily found the O'Haras was tempered by horror at the numbers living and sleeping in the small, airless room.

Reading her mind, Kieron said: ‘The fault lies with the landlords. They don't care about sanitation, they never carry out repairs, and they squeeze as many people as possible into as few rooms as possible.'

In the corner of the room Katy had been brewing a weak mash of tea and half a dozen chipped and steaming mugs were handed around. As visitors Kieron and Maura were accorded the privilege of having a mug each, but the O'Farrells and their friends shared, drinking a little and passing the mug to the person standing or sitting next to them.