No Enemy but Time (21 page)

Claudia looked up at him. ‘What did you say?'

‘I said I hadn't the faintest idea,' he said. ‘It could have been any one of the hangers-on he surrounds himself with.'

Claudia frowned. ‘It's probably that girl Dempster. I gather she's wormed her way in pretty successfully. Not that it matters. It's time he had a steady girl friend.' Personally she didn't care who Frank shacked up with now that he was out of her house and Claire was happily engaged. She and Philip seldom discussed how he lived or his activities. Claudia heard the local gossip but she didn't pass it on. She loved Philip and she didn't want to upset him. Things were shaping up so well, and except for that
bloody
mishap to Blue Boy, she'd never felt more content. Neil Fraser was a good match; plenty of money, a bright future, and most important from her point of view, he was a gent. They all spoke the same language, and God, didn't that make life easier when it came to a marriage. He was crazy about Claire, and she seemed just as much in love with him. Claudia missed nothing that went on in her own house, and she knew perfectly well that they did a Bit of corridor creeping when they stayed the weekends before they became engaged. Claire had grown up, and it was thanks to Neil. Claudia was enjoying herself planning a really big wedding, with everyone invited, and Philip said he liked Neil and approved.

Philip poked the turf fire. He always did that when he was worried about something, Claudia knew. She stopped thinking about losing a season's hunting because of the horse's injury, and said, ‘You're sure Claire was all right?'

He glanced up at her. ‘Yes, of course. I told you, she only rang up to ask about the woman who answered Frank's phone. Isn't this Molly Dempster connected to Eamonn Dempster?'

Claudia had hoped he wouldn't work that out. ‘It's Marie, not Molly,' she said. ‘I think she's a granddaughter, but I'm not sure.'

‘Then he's really mixing with the scum of the earth,' Philip said. ‘The Dempsters have been in the IRA since 1922.'

‘She
may not be,' Claudia countered. ‘She's a dentist's daughter, I think. Works in Dublin for some firm of solicitors. Do stop hacking away at the fire, darling, or it'll go out! There's no use brooding about what Frank does. He's going his own way.'

Philip laid down the poker. ‘I've heard things,' he said slowly. ‘You know what people are like; they can't help talking. Someone in the club asked me the other day if it was true that Frank was setting up an Irish-American merchant bank, and Ryan was going to be on the board.'

‘Is he?' Claudia asked. ‘Why don't you ask him? After all, you're on speaking terms. He's been here once or twice. Surely he'll tell you?'

‘I don't intend to ask,' Philip said coldly. ‘We talk about the farms and he asks advice about the property in Meath, but we've no point of contact beyond that. I just have a feeling he's getting into deep water, and I don't want any scandal before Claire's wedding. When that's out of the way, he can do what he likes.'

Claudia sighed. ‘He's a fool,' she said. ‘If he's getting mixed up with people like the Dempsters and that dreadful uncle, they'll just use him for all they're worth. He's rich, remember. A rich Anglo with a bad conscience. And an Irish mother to trade on. God, I wish somebody could talk some sense into him!'

‘I've made up my mind,' Philip said slowly. ‘I'm not going to leave him Riverstown.'

Claudia stared at him. ‘Philip! You're not serious?'

‘Perfectly serious. He's irresponsible; after the wedding I'm going to change my will.'

‘You can't do that,' she said. ‘You can't disinherit your own son. He's only young; he may change. He may have his fling with these people and then one day he'll see through them and it'll all be over. You mustn't do anything like that!'

‘I love this house,' Philip said. ‘It's been in my family for generations. I'm not going to have it filled with the kind of people he brings into my mother's old home. He won't change, Claudia. He's not one of us. Now don't let's discuss it any more. Tell me, what did Mack say about Blue Boy?'

They had been married for over twenty-five years, and Claudia knew when to stop. ‘He thinks he's had it for this season,' she answered. ‘I could take out Lucky, but he's very strong and a bit green.'

‘You're not hunting any four-year-old,' Philip announced. ‘If Boy's out of action, go and look for something else. Something reliable and experienced.'

Claudia smiled at him and then gave her horsey laugh. ‘If you dare to say a “lady's ride”, I'll scream,' she said. ‘Does that mean you're going to pay for a new hunter?'

He smiled slightly. ‘It'll be cheaper than hospital bills if you take a fall off that lunatic Lucky. Ring round tomorrow, and we might go horse coping together.'

‘Thanks, darling,' Claudia said gently. They had a perfect understanding. She thought, ‘If Claire ends up like me, she'll be all right.'

Kevin Ryan came back to Ireland just before Frank's first Christmas at Meath. He had his nephew's letter in his briefcase. He had shown it to Mary Rose, who said what a warm and sensitive person he must be to write like that. Now that the time to meet aproached, it was Kevin who shied away and delayed his trip. He felt uneasy, unsure of what to say and do when he met Eileen's son. Old habits died very hard, and he was afraid his New World confidence would desert him when he was face to face with an Arbuthnot. Finally he came a month late. It was arranged that he would call on his nephew in Meath. They'd spoken on the transatlantic telephone, and the conversation had been stilted. It wasn't helped by a double echo that repeated everything Frank Arbuthnot said twice.

First Kevin visited the Half House. The builders were out and it was being decorated. He was pleased and proud of what he saw. It was a hell of a fine place now. All the old grot of the Hamiltons cleared away, with gleaming bathrooms and plumbing that worked. He'd given Mary Rose a free hand with the money and she ransacked the Dublin antique shops for Waterford chandeliers and handsome furniture. The pictures had cost a small fortune, and he was proud of them. Irish landscapes, big heavily framed scenes of mountain and lake, and a beautiful Lavery portrait of his own wife as an Irish peasant girl. The lovely face haunted Kevin. He took a lot of photographs to show people back home. His children were excited and demanded to come over. His brother and sister-in-law paid him compliments and criticized behind his back. Kevin knew and didn't mind. They'd be jealous and proud at the same time. He understood their feelings. At last he got into his car and set out for Meath to meet his nephew. He felt less nervous because he could talk about his grand new house if it was awkward to find things to say.

Frank opened the front door himself. Behind him the massive Gothic façade was daunting enough. He saw a short, grey-haired American, with a scarf wound round his neck and a curious forward stoop as if he were sheltering from a cold wind.

It was Kevin who spoke, prompted by years of political glad-handing at strange doors. ‘Frank, isn't it? I'm your Uncle Kevin,' and held out both hands.

They were settled in front of a big turf fire, the smell sweet in the large old-fashioned room. One on either side in two armchairs with a decent whiskey in their hands.

Frank couldn't stop looking at him. He was like the photograph, and yet not really. The same thin face and narrow features, sandy grey hair and pale eyes. His mother had been delicately pretty. Her brother was wiry, expansive in gesture and with a ready laugh. From the moment he grasped both Frank's hands, he had felt a sympathy between them. Leaving his old home had been inevitable, but Frank had never felt so lonely in his life. The businesslike visits to his father made it worse. He felt so painfully rejected that he put off going to see Philip. He wasn't missed in the house. Claudia was friendly, but she never pretended to miss him. He felt keenly that his father was relieved when he said it was time to go. They both stood up with the speed of anticipation; Frank had seen them do it before when hurrying an unwanted visitor on their way. He had looked forward to this meeting, because he dared not do anything else. He dared not let it fail, because of the price he'd paid. And it wasn't going to fail. Sitting opposite his uncle, Frank felt a warmth and a kinship with an older man for the first time in his life.

‘I remember sneaking in to see you,' Kevin said. ‘In through the back door, with our old cousin, Mary Donovan, taking me by the hand. Did you ever know her, Frank?'

‘When I was little, yes. She always gave me biscuits when I went into the kitchen.'

‘She was a grand woman,' Kevin announced, forgetting how he had despised her as a slovenly old gossip.

‘Yes, she was,' Frank nodded, remembering how she'd slipped him his mother's brooch, with the whisper not to tell on her, it was as much as her job was worth.

‘You were a lonely little lad,' his uncle went on. ‘Lying all by yourself in the room, with your poor mother gone, and your father away fighting for the English. I said then, one day I'll come back and see Eileen's boy. And so I wrote the letter to you. You know, you've a look of her.'

There
was
something, Kevin decided, a fleeting expression that was Eileen in spite of the black Arbuthnot colouring. All his apprehension had gone. He felt confident and in command of the situation. He'd forgotten that his nephew was young enough to be his son. He felt warm towards him, and some instinct detected that Frank needed acceptance as much as he did.

He wondered exactly how much of the circumstances of his mother's marriage and her death the young man knew. He decided to enlighten him a little at a time. He began gently that night, feeling his way. He stayed to dinner at his nephew's insistence. The whiskey flowed; he didn't like wine and wouldn't pretend he did. He took in the comfort and the shabbiness of a typical upper-class Anglo big house, with its mass of silver on the table and fine glass, with holes in the curtains from years of wear and patches of damp by the cornice. He saw the housekeeper or cook or whatever she was waiting on them both, and felt that in spite of it all, Frank Arbuthnot was lonely and looking for something more. If he'd been his son, he couldn't have been more welcoming. It made Kevin feel good, and it wasn't just the drink warming his heart. He recognized the identity that had so alienated Philip. For all his English accent and his gentleman's manners, he was an Irishman. The Ryan blood was strong in him, and the tinker ancestry they shared made signals across the generations.

It was long past midnight when Kevin said goodbye. They'd made a firm date for Frank to go to New York and stay with him and meet his young cousins.

‘And Mary Rose,' his uncle said. ‘She'll take to you, Frankie, just like you were her own. And she's a grand woman. Quite the little lady she is too.' His brogue was thicker, and he wrung his nephew's hand and finally embraced him before he climbed into his car. For all the emotionalism, even the theatricality of his farewell, there was a genuine feeling of affection.

Watching him drive away, Frank saw beyond the swagger of the Irishman made good. In his way, Kevin was a considerable man, a man of shrewd intelligence and strong ambitions.

Families of enormous wealth and power in the modern world had sprung from stock like his. He made the old-established overlords like Philip Arbuthnot seem tired and bloodless.

Frank didn't go to bed. He went back to the dying fire and built it up, and poured a nightcap whiskey. He didn't feel tired. He felt elated, excited. There was drink in him, he admitted that. It might exaggerate what he was feeling, but it wasn't responsible for it. He had gambled on meeting his uncle, with his future and his family ties at stake, and he decided that night that he had won. He had met the other side of himself and it filled the void at last. He had reached out across the class and racial divide of Irish life and touched hands with his mother's people. He knew now that he was closer to them than to the father and stepmother sitting so smugly at Riverstown. He learned so much about himself and his mother's brief unhappy life in the guarded revelations of his uncle. There was more, much more, but that would come in time. And he would make his sister understand. She was the only one who mattered. He was a little drunk, a little unsteady putting the guard to the fire and walking up the stairs to bed. And he was sad too, because there was no one in his whole big house to talk to about what had happened.

There are no secrets in Ireland. Philip's friends in the Kildare Street Club were not the only ones to hear that there was a rift between them and Frank had moved to Meath. The cause was known too. It lost Frank sympathy among his friends, and aroused interest among others he didn't know. It began with an invitation to lunch from a well-known writer who'd recently bought a house a few miles away. The writer was an American of Irish descent who had made a fortune out of heavily erotic cult books. Being a newcomer, he was anxious to make friends and innocent of all intent when one of the literati from Dublin suggested he approach Frank Arbuthnot.

It was a Sunday and Frank's trip to New York was only ten days away. The writer lived in a big Georgian house in a handsome park; he had a pretty American wife, who considered him a genius and treated him accordingly, and a collection of stray dogs, picked up from the street corners and the country roads where they'd been abandoned. The writer was regarded locally as an amiable eccentric who wrote dirty books, and no one took him seriously. No one expected him to stay long in Ireland when the novelty wore off. People had seen his kind before.

It was a lavish party; drinks flowed and the atmosphere was talkative and stimulating. Frank, who knew only two people in the dozen invited, was soon enjoying himself. He felt as if he, rather than the writer, was the centre of attention. A charming professor of history at University College Dublin treated him to amusing anecdotes and introduced him to a young psychiatrist who'd come back to Ireland after three years at the Institute for Psychiatric Studies in Boston. He had a beard and a serious manner which Frank found attractive. His name was Sean Filey. He seemed to be making gentle fun of the writer, who was becoming more expansive about the role of sexuality in art. At lunch Frank was seated next to a girl he hadn't met. She was very pretty and vivacious, and she paid him a lot of attention.