Fools of Fortune (21 page)

‘I used to feel sick at heart,’ she said, ‘when I thought about what had happened to that boy. It made me sick at heart, that fearful tragedy and all it left behind.’

‘Miss Halliwell, is there anyone else you can think of who might know?’

‘His mother was a drunkard. Every day the child would walk home to that. No matter how well he had recovered there was always his mother’s selfishness to remind him.’

‘I feel that no one is telling me the truth. I feel there’s something being hidden. Even Josephine—’

‘Josephine?’

‘The housemaid the Quintons had.’

‘Oh yes, a housemaid brought him up.’ She spoke bitterly, the dreaminess gone from her face. It had been horrible, she said, a child alone with a mother who was given up to drink, with only a housemaid to look after him. ‘Can you blame him for going away?

Can you blame him for leaving this miserable country and starting life afresh? Perhaps we should all do that.’

I stood up. Miss Halliwell had no idea what I was talking about when I said that something was being hidden. She knew nothing about your whereabouts; I apologized for disturbing her.

‘Is there some reason why you should communicate so urgently with your cousin?’

‘Yes, there is.’

‘You haven’t told me.’

‘It doesn’t matter now. I’ve been a nuisance to you. I’m sorry, Miss Halliwell.’

‘I loved him, I dearly loved him. That isn’t easy, you know.’

I didn’t know that; you hadn’t told me; perhaps you hadn’t known yourself. Miss Halliwell said:

‘I met your cousin on the street one day. I invited him to tea, but he did not wish to come. No, don’t go yet.’ Again there was the soft exhalation of her breath. ‘Of course that boy must start afresh. This country has fallen to pieces since they had their revolution. Gunmen run it now.’

‘I don’t know what to do, Miss Halliwell. I am going to have Willie’s baby.’

‘Gunmen,’ Miss Halliwell repeated, and then abruptly stopped.

‘That’s why I came back,’ I said.

A horse and cart went by in Mercier Street. A contortion twisted the features that you had once likened to a wilted flower.

‘Willie’s baby,’ I repeated.

‘My God …’

‘If Josephine had still been in the house in Windsor Terrace I might have stayed there and waited for him.’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘I have very little money, Miss Halliwell. I have lodgings in a place where they make me pay every morning before I leave the house. Soon I shall be destitute.’

‘How dare you come here in this manner.’

‘I know I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.’

‘You come here to beg, a child I have never seen before, saying you are Willie Quinton’s cousin—’

‘I am his cousin. And I am not begging.’

‘It’s a lie, what you say about a baby.’ Her hand reached out and grasped my wrist. ‘You speak of other people’s lies but you are telling lies yourself.’

‘No, it isn’t a lie, Miss Halliwell.’

The grip on my wrist tightened. In her faded face the schoolteacher’s lips were drawn back in distaste, and when she spoke a fine mist of saliva moistened my forehead.

‘I’ve seen boys in this schoolroom growing into sniggering louts. Willie was never like that. He was a special child, who was led astray.’

‘Please let me go, Miss Halliwell.’

She withdrew her hand from my wrist. The anger had ebbed from her face, leaving it white and puckered. She looked away, and for a moment held her head quite still, as she had before. I left her, crossing the wooden floor to the door.

‘I hope you suffer,’ Miss Halliwell said. ‘For all your life you deserve to suffer.’

I passed the shop windows we had passed together, the Turkish delight shop, the facade of the Victoria Hotel, brightly lit. I remembered the beggarwoman you had so harshly turned away, and the seagulls above our heads. By the river it was bitterly cold. In the sunshine of that summer we’d watched the men painting the ironwork of their cargo vessels. We’d lingered on all our walks.

Darkly the river slurped now, an oily sheen gleaming in the moonlight. Had I been absurd, when that summer was over, to imagine in the rectory and at school that we might be married? I had imagined so very clearly your mother and your aunts in the church, my father guiding us through the service, my wedding dress with a shade of yellow in it. We would sing Psalm 23, I’d thought, and afterwards we would be together for ever.

Slowly I walked along the quay. What courage your mother had possessed to draw a sleeve back and expose those vulnerable arteries throbbing beneath the skin, to take the blade from the coloured paper that wrapped it, to bear the pain, the sliver of metal slipping home. In a month or so the condition of my body would be apparent to everyone who saw me; I could not melt away as you and Josephine had. I wished you might know that I stood above the cold river, but I knew I would not be granted even that. And then I wished I had your mother’s courage.

I turned and began the journey back to the boarding house. A man almost as small as a dwarf paid me some attention which I shook off, telling him to go away. But he was beside me again before I reached the front door, bobbing his head at me, not quite plucking at the sleeve of my coat, although his fingers made a plucking motion in the air. His eyes were eager, darting over my features.

‘Please go away,’ I repeated, and it was only then that I noticed he was attempting to give me an envelope. I took it from him. The note it contained read:

Mr Lanigan of Lanigan & O’Brien, Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths, would ask you to call upon him at eleven o’clock tomorrow morning.
There followed the address of Lanigan and O’Brien’s offices and brief directions as to how to reach them.

‘I’m sorry I spoke like that,’ I said, wearily, to the man. The invitation he brought me in no way raised my hopes or expectations; it seemed impossible that anything good would happen now. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again.

The man did not reply.

6

‘That was Declan O’Dwyer, Marianne. Without the gift of speech. Willie may perhaps have told you.’

‘Do you know where Willie is, Mr Lanigan?’ ‘No, Marianne, I do not.’

A brown suit draped the shape that had reminded you of a pyramid. A fresh, polka-dotted bow-tie was like a butterfly poised on the incline of Mr Lanigan’s neck. He smiled invitingly, offering me refreshment.

‘No, no,’ I said. ‘No, really, Mr Lanigan.’ ‘We have a fine fruit cordial, or sherry if you should prefer it. Declan O’Dwyer would be honoured to bring us in a tray.’

An ebony ruler, raised to strike the wall as a summons for Declan O’Dwyer, was delicately returned to the solicitor’s blotting-pad.

The blotting paper, as yet hardly marked with ink, was blue. There was sealing-wax on the desk also, long sticks in red and black and green, and rubber bands in a brass container.

‘Dear Marianne, I am glad you did not elude us. You mentioned your boarding house to the good Mrs Sweeney, otherwise we might have had a mischief finding you.’

His tone was sympathetic. His tiny, twinkling eyes moved sympathetically over my features. He was the only person who appeared to like me, or at least to welcome me, since I had made my ill-fated journey back to Ireland. His sympathy, and the concern in his face, caused me to weep. I turned my head away to dry my tears and when I could speak I told him how I had visited Josephine in her convent institution, and Miss Halliwell in her school. No one would talk about you, I said; no one had helped me. I spoke of the rectory and the calamity it would be if I gave birth to a baby among my father’s parishioners. I even told him about how miserable I had been in Switzerland, my unhappiness increased by the Professor’s lecherous pursuit of me. As I finished he rapped on the wall with his ruler and briskly ordered coffee and toasted crumpets when his mute clerk entered the office.

‘You have upset yourself considerably,’ he softly chided me when the man had gone. ‘Dear child, you look exceedingly ill.’

‘I am not ill.’

He nodded ponderously. His smile had faded a little.

‘I have to tell you, Marianne, that a wire has been received in Kilneagh from your parents. They are naturally most concerned.’

Declan O’Dwyer returned with the coffee and the toasted crumpets. Mr Lanigan’s eyes were beadily contemplative, a neat hand still gripped the ebony ruler. When the door had closed behind his clerk he spoke again. He questioned me closely, wishing to know if I could be certain beyond all doubt that my condition was as I had stated; if I had visited a doctor, which I had not; if I had calculated when the child would be born; if I was sure I did not feel unwell.

Impatiently, I brushed all this aside.

‘People are keeping something from me. I know they are and so do you, Mr Lanigan.’

He did not reply. He sipped his coffee and divided a crumpet into quarters. When he spoke he ignored what I had said.

‘A wire has been sent back to the rectory to say you have safely arrived here. Please let me send another to say you are forthwith returning, Marianne. And please do drink that coffee.’

He smiled coaxingly at me, two rows of teeth like pearls decorating his face. I said:

‘I have written them a letter. They will receive that also, in a day or two. I cannot return there.’

I stirred the skin that had formed on the coffee’s surface. I tried to eat part of my crumpet. I felt more confused than I had before our conversation had begun.

‘I do not belong there now,’ I said.

The crumpet had made my fingers sticky. I wiped them on a handkerchief. Mr Lanigan continued to smile at me.

‘Belong, Marianne?’

‘I do not belong in Woodcombe Rectory any more.’

The smile began to fade again, but his voice had not ceased to be concerned and friendly. He said:

‘I have summoned you here so that you may hear a proposition, but before you do so I most earnestly entreat you to return to Woodcombe Rectory. Of course it will be painful for your mother and your father. Of course it will be hard for them to hold their heads up, but even so I would beg you to return to England.’

‘I would like to hear your proposition, Mr Lanigan.’

The smile went completely. The coffee tray was pushed to one side. Mr Lanigan, too, wiped his fingers on a handkerchief. Quietly he said he was disappointed, then drawing a sustaining breath continued:

‘I am an intermediary in what follows, Marianne. I am passing on to you what I have been bidden to pass on. I do not approve the wisdom of this message. You understand, Marianne?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well then.’ He paused again. ‘Well then indeed, Marianne.’ He pursed his lips, reluctant to continue, meticulously observing me for any sign that might betray a change of mind. He sighed. ‘Well then, Marianne, I am to say that if you should remain adamant in the position you have adopted, and provided there is no legal objection on the part of your father—who has every right so to object—then without prejudice, and the arrangement being in no way binding, and on the understanding that it may be terminated by your benefactress at will, your cousin’s Aunt Fitzeustace will take you in. I mention his Aunt Fitzeustace since it is she who has communicated with me and who is, I believe, generally in charge in that household at Kilneagh. Neither she nor her sister condones; that is to be made clear. And you would be expected to make a fair contribution, in so far as your condition permits, to the labour involved in various household tasks.’

I did not say anything. I could not because it was during this long speech of the solicitor’s, without warning or relevance to what he was saying, that the truth crept into my mind. With startling abruptness I shared with him, and with Mr Derenzy and the Sweeneys, with Johnny Lacy and Josephine and Aunt Pansy, what they sought to keep from me. Of all the people who knew you only Miss Halliwell and I had been outside that circle and now Miss Halliwell was alone. Until someone told her, you would be the same in her eyes as you had always been: in mine, in a matter of seconds, you had acquired a different identity.

‘So you see, Marianne,’ Mr Lanigan finished up.

I should have been afraid but was not. I should have wept but I had wept enough already. I felt calm, without the desire to exclaim or to make any comment whatsoever. Nor did I seek to question Mr Lanigan: there was no need for that. I was aware only of sensing that my reason for refusing to return to the rectory was not that I would bring disgrace with me. A different reality hung like a weight in the solicitor’s office, and I understood perfectly that for my sake you had sought, as best you could, to destroy our love. I had not permitted you to, but I did not believe you blamed me for that now. Our love was still there, wherever either of us might be. I could feel it all around me in that office, part of the truth that made everything different.

‘Now, there is another matter, Marianne.’

The sharp little eyes again scrutinized my features, perhaps even penetrated these thoughts.

‘It is simply this, Marianne. Your cousin visited me before he went away. Certain documents were drawn up which may or may not have led me to deduce that your cousin intended to be absent from this country for more than a little time. I must, without comment, place the deduction before you. I must also, since such is my duty, reveal to you that should you find yourself in need—and I quote that form of words, Marianne—should find yourself in need, certain monies will be made available to you.’

There was a pause, and further scrutiny.

‘Your cousin made provision for an eventuality of which I myself remained in ignorance. It is clear to me now that he had the possibility of your present circumstances in mind. I am authorized, Marianne, to implement the agreed form of words, and it would seem I must decree that you do clearly find yourself in need.’

Mr Lanigan went on talking. He made a final effort to persuade me to return to England, but after a time I heard no more than the sound of his voice, a rush of words without comprehension. More than ever, Kilneagh was a fearsome place and yet there was nowhere else I wished to be. No matter how grim that half-ruined house was, no matter how much nobody there wanted me, it was where I belonged because you had belonged there also. Every detail of my existence, every vein in my body, every mark, every intimate part of me, loved you with a tenderness that made me want to close my eyes and faint. Every second of my twenty years of life had to do with you, and I thanked God for the anxiety of our grandparents in India when they had worried so about your mother. Their anxiety had given us our summer and our love; it had given us our child. At Kilneagh I would wait for you. I would exist in whatever limbo fate intended, while you wandered the face of the earth. Solitude claimed you: I understood that.