Ashworth Hall (22 page)

“You ’ave some wonderful dreams,” she said hesitantly. She loved the way he spoke, not only the wild things he said but the soft lilt of his voice, foreign and full of music. But she did not begin to understand him.

“That’s the things we can have for nothing, Gracie, and if you fight hard enough, no one can take from you. But you have to fight, and you have to hand them on, to your children and your children’s children. That’s the way we survive. Never forget that. Knowing your dreams is knowing who you are.”

She said nothing, just walked beside him, happy that he was there.

They reached the greenhouse and he opened the door for her. It was surprisingly easy to behave like a lady when she was with him, to accept such courtesies.

“Thank you.” She went through and stopped in wonder at the rows of flowers all in pots on benches. The colors were vivid, like hundreds of silks. She did not know the names of them, except the chrysanthemums and the Michaelmas daisies and late asters. She let out a long sigh of pure pleasure.

“Do you want a dozen the same, or a dozen all different?” he asked, standing just behind her.

“I never seen anything like this,” she said softly. “Even flower sellers in the market in’t got this much.”

“They’ll all be over soon.”

“Yeah, but they in’t over now!”

He smiled. “Sometimes, Gracie, you’re very wise.” He put his hand lightly on her shoulder. She could feel its weight, and she imagined she could feel the warmth of it too. He had said she was wise, and yet there was a shadow in his voice.

“You thinkin’ about winter?” she asked. “Don’ forget there’ll be spring too. There ’as to be all sorts, or it don’ work.”

“For the flowers, yes, but there are winters of the heart there don’t have to be, and winters for the hungry. Not everyone lives to see the spring.”

She still kept facing the rows of flowers.

“Yer talkin’ about Ireland again?” she asked. She did not want to know, but she could not stay there with him and go around the subject as if there were nothing there. She had never avoided the real.

“If you knew the sadness of it,” he said softly. “The crying sadness of it, Gracie. Seeing all these flowers makes me think of laughter and dancing, then of graves. They follow each other so quick sometimes.”

“That ’appens in London too,” she reminded him. She did not know if it was a comfort or a contradiction. But she was going to remember who she was also, and Clerkenwell had seen its share of hunger and cold, landlords who cheated and were greedy, moneylenders, bullies, rats, overspilling drains and bouts of cholera and the typhus. Everyone knew somebody with rickets or tuberculosis. “London in’t all paved wi’ gold, yer know. I see dead babies in doorways too, all froze up, an’ men so ’ungry they’d slit your throat for a loaf o’ bread.”

“Have you?” He sounded surprised.

“Not in Bloomsbury,” she assured him. “In Clerkenwell, where I were before I came ter Mrs. Pitt.”

“I suppose there’s poverty in most places,” he conceded. “It’s the injustice that makes you weep.”

It rose to her tongue to argue. All kinds of things made her furious, sad, twisted up inside with helplessness. But she did not want to disagree with Finn Hennessey. She would like to be able to share with him everything that mattered, to look at the flowers, smell the damp earth, and talk of good things, of today and tomorrow, not yesterday.

“What sort of flowers are you getting?” he asked.

“I dunno. I in’t made up me mind yet. What der you think?” She turned around for the first time and looked at him. He was beautiful, with his black hair as soft as a night and his dark eyes that laughed one minute and drowned you the next. She found herself a little breathless, and confused with feelings.

“How about some of these big shaggy chrysanthemums?” he suggested, but without moving.

She had to concentrate on the room they were to go into. Her mind was a whirl. She could only remember florals. She had better not get lots of colors.

“I’ll take them big white ones,” she said, with no idea if they would be right, but she had to say something. “They look just about openin’ nicely. Them red ones is too far on.”

“What about the golden brown?” he asked.

“Color don’t go wi’ much. I’ll take the white ones.”

“I’ll pick them for you.” He stepped around her and started to examine the individual blooms for the best ones. “Funny we should have Padraig Doyle here, and Carson O’Day,” he said, smiling at her as he plucked the first flower.

“Is it? In’t they the right people for doin’ whatever it is?”

“Oh, probably, if there can be ‘right people.’ It’s all happened lots of times before, you know?”

“ ’As it? You mean it din’t work out?”

He picked another bloom, smelling its earthy fragrance with a sigh, then offering it to her.

She took it and held the damp petals to her face. It was like breathing heaven.

“No, it didn’t work,” he said in little more than a whisper. “It was a love story. Neassa Doyle was a young Catholic girl, about nineteen she was, same as you.”

She did not interrupt to tell him she was twenty now.

“Full of laughter and hope,” he went on, holding the flower still as if he had forgotten it. “She met Drystan O’Day by chance. It should never have happened. He was Protestant, as fierce as the north wind in January, all keen, cutting edge, his family was.” He laughed but there was no humor in it. “Saw the Pope as the devil on earth and all the church’s ways as scarlet as sin itself. They met and fell in love for all the age-old human reasons: they saw the same beauty and magic on the earth, the same tenderness in the sky, loved to sing the old songs, dance till they were too tired even to laugh at themselves.”

He was leaning against the door jamb, watching her, searching her eyes as he spoke. She knew he was sharing what mattered to him most, some part of the inner core of himself, the beliefs which drove him. “They hoped for peace, an honorable work,” he went on. “A small home and children to raise, same as you might, or me. Long evenings together when the day was done, time to talk, or just to sit and each to know the other was there.” He passed her the flower and started to look for another.

“What happened?”

“When it was too late they discovered they were on opposite sides. By then it didn’t matter to them, but of course it mattered to everyone else.”

“Their families?” she asked in awe. “But ’ow could they stop it? Nobody can stop ’oo you love. Was it her father stopped ’er?”

“No.” He looked at her very directly. “It never came to that. The English got to know of it. We were almost at agreement then, but they wanted to keep us divided. Divide and rule.” His face was pinched with pain. His voice dropped to a harsh whisper. “They used them both.”

“ ’Ow?” she whispered.

“It was mainly one English soldier. His name was Alexander Chinnery. He was an officer, a lieutenant in one of the Anglo-Irish regiments. He pretended to be a friend of Drystan O’Day’s.” His young face was filled with grief and hatred till he looked so different it almost frightened her. “That’s the duplicity of it,” he said hoarsely. “He was free to carry messages to Neassa as well. No one thought anything of it. He promised to help them both to run away. He was going to get a boat for them. It was summer. Drystan was a good mariner. He could have sailed across to the Isle of Man, that’s where they were supposed to go.”

She did not take her eyes from his face. She did not hear the gust of wind drive the falling leaves against the glass, or see them flurry over.

“What ’appened?”

“Neassa was beautiful,” he said softly. “Like Mrs. Greville, warm as sunlight on the autumn trees.” His eyes filled with tears. “Chinnery met her, as he said he would. She trusted him, you see. She went with him to the place where they were to meet Drystan. She couldn’t go alone because it was too dangerous.” He spat out the last word as if it scorched his tongue. “A woman alone at night.”

She waited while he struggled to regain control of himself and continue.

“He took her to the place on the headland where the boat was supposed to be, there with the wind above the sea.” His voice cracked. “And he raped her ….”

Gracie felt as if she had been struck.

“And cut off her beautiful hair,” he went on, his eyes fixed on hers as if the greenhouse with all its reflecting glass, the rows of flowers, the bright color, the wind outside, did not exist. “And left her there for her people to find,” he finished.

“Oh, Finn! That’s terrible!” She breathed out in horror too great for long and passionate words. She felt numb inside. The betrayal was like a blackness that swallowed everything. “What did ’e do, poor Drystan?” She dreaded the answer, but she had to know.

“He found her,” he answered in little above a whisper, his fist clenched white. “He went mad with grief. The poor, trusting soul, he never dreamed even then that it was Chinnery.”

A starling hopped across the roof, its feet rattling on the glass, but neither of them heard it.

“What’d ’e do?” she asked again.

“He lost his head completely, and went and attacked the Catholic community, anyone he could find. He’d killed two of her brothers and injured the third before the English army caught up with him and shot him too.” He took a deep breath. “That was on the seventh of June, thirty years ago. Of course, in a little while both sides realized what had happened. The English took Chinnery back to England and covered it all up. Nobody ever heard of him again. It was probably for his own protection,” he added bitterly. “If any Irishman had found him, he’d have killed him and been hailed as a hero by both sides.”

“That’s terrible!” Gracie said through a tight, aching throat. Her eyes prickled with tears and she had to swallow hard. “It’s awful!”

“It’s Ireland, Gracie.” He picked another flower and handed it to her. “Even love can’t win.” He smiled as he said it, but his eyes were full of just as much pain as she felt for the people gone thirty years ago. Time did not matter. The loss was real. It could have been anybody. It could be themselves.

He leaned forward, so close to her she could feel the warmth of his skin, and he kissed her lips, slowly, gentry, as if he wanted to count every second and remember it. Then he reached forward and took the flowers from her and laid them on the bench and put his arms around her, holding her softly, and kissed her again.

When at last he moved away Gracie’s heart was hammering, and she opened her eyes to look at him, certain that what she saw would be beautiful. It was. He was smiling.

“Take your white flowers back,” he said under his breath. “And watch carefully for yourself, Gracie Phipps. There’s disaster in this house, and who’s to say there won’t be others yet. I’d hate more than you can know for you to get hurt.” He put up his hand and touched her hair for a moment, then turned and walked past her and out of the door, leaving her to pick another few chrysanthemums and go back to the house with her feet barely touching the ground, and the taste of his lips still on hers.

Charlotte bit her tongue rather than reply to Emily as she felt inclined. What she wanted to say to Kezia Moynihan made excellent sense, but she could hardly say it after quarreling with her own sister, when the better part of her knew exactly what the reason was. Emily was terrified for Jack physically, but also she was afraid he would not measure up to whatever standard she had set for him, or he had set for himself, with this wretched conference.

She found Kezia in the morning room as Emily had said. She was sitting on the padding of the club fender, her skirts puffed out around her. Charlotte went in quite casually and sat down near the fire as if she were cold, when in fact she was merely angry.

“Do you think it is going to clear?” she asked, glancing towards the window and the really quite pleasant sky.

“The weather?” Kezia said with a slight smile.

“That also,” Charlotte agreed, sinking back. “It is all rather wretched, isn’t it?”

“Absolutely.” Kezia shrugged slightly. “And I cannot honestly imagine it getting any better. Have you seen the newspapers?”

“No. Is there something of interest?”

“Only the latest comments on the Parnell-O’Shea divorce. I cannot see Parnell lasting long after this, whatever the verdict is.” Her face tightened. Charlotte knew what her thoughts must be, what they had to be, regarding Fergal. The risk he had taken was insane.

As if Charlotte had spoken her thoughts aloud, Kezia clenched her fists and stared into the fire.

“When I think what he’s thrown away, I could hate him,” she said bitterly. “I understand why men punch each other. It must be very relieving to be able to strike out as hard as you can when someone exasperates you beyond endurance.”

“I’m sure,” Charlotte agreed. “But I think the relief would last a very short time, then it would have to be paid for.”

“How very sensible you are,” Kezia said without an iota of admiration.

“I’ve cut off my nose to spite my face too often to think it’s clever,” Charlotte replied, keeping her temper.

“I find that difficult to imagine.” Kezia picked up the poker and leaning sideways, prodded viciously at the fire.

“That is because you leap to judgments about other people and find it very difficult to imagine their feelings at all,” Charlotte replied, letting go her temper with considerable satisfaction. “It seems to me the fault you criticize in your brother is exactly the one you suffer from yourself.”

Kezia froze, then turned around very slowly, her face red, although it was impossible to tell whether it was with anger or the heat from the fire.

“That is the stupidest thing you have said so far! We ate exact opposites. I followed my faith and was loyal to my people at the cost of the only person I have ever loved, as Fergal commanded me to. But he’s thrown everything away, betrayed all of us, and committed adultery with a married woman, as well as a Roman Catholic actually representing the enemy!”

“I meant the inability to place yourself in anyone else’s situation and imagine how they feel,” Charlotte explained. “Fergal did not understand that you truly loved Cathal. He saw it only as a matter of obedience to your faith and loyalty to your people’s way of life. Without any compassion at all, he ordered you to give him up.”