No Enemy but Time (5 page)

He sat her down on his knee and kissed her, waking all the wicked senses that she'd been taught to suppress all her life. She was a delightfully fiery little thing, Philip thought, forgetting all about tea, opening her coat and beginning to unbutton her blouse.

It was Eileen who heard the knock and leapt away from him before the door had time to open. The silver tray was set down by Lily, who was senior parlourmaid and in her thirties. She didn't look at Eileen. She addressed herself to Philip.

‘What time would you be wanting dinner, sir?'

Philip knew her well. She was his mother's toady, sneaking on the other maids, angling for the hated Mrs Gerard's job.

He said, ‘Ask Mrs Arbuthnot.'

Eileen panicked. What time? Philip didn't eat tea like they did at home. He ate dinner and all she could remember was living with him in London; when they rented a flat, he wouldn't let her cook. There was a woman hired to do what she felt was a wife's job. What time? The gleam in Lily's eye was mocking as she repeated the question.

‘Cook says, what time would you be wanting yer dinner, mam?'

‘Eight o'clock, please.' Eileen remembered their routine in London. It had taken her months to get used to eating so late and so many times a day.

‘Very good, mam.'

The door closed and Philip held out his arms. There was no desire left in her and she shook her head.

‘I'll pour the tea,' she said.

‘We can go early to bed,' he suggested. ‘Or would you rather see round the house first?'

She gave him the cup; a little had spilled in the saucer, because her hand wasn't quite steady.

‘I'd rather go to bed with you than see round any house,' she said. ‘If we were in London now, that's what we'd do. But not here, Phil. Not with all of them watching and sniggering.'

‘Don't be ridiculous,' he exclaimed. ‘Nobody's watching! Darling, for heaven's sake, you're the mistress here. You dealt with Lily perfectly well. It's bound to be a bit strange for you at first, but saying you won't make love to your own husband in your own house because of the servants …'

‘They're servants to you,' she said quietly. ‘But I went to school with them. Mary Donovan is a cousin of my father's! How am I going to do it, Phil? How am I going to manage this house and be a wife you can be proud of, when I've been brought up a different way, and everybody in the place knows it?'

He could look quite hard, she thought suddenly. Quite the Arbuthnot, dealing with some nonsense from the Irish.

‘If there's any difficulty, Eileen, or advantage taken because you used to know them, we'll sack the lot and get a completely new staff. So put that out of your head once and for all. Now give me a piece of that fruit cake and stop being silly. We'll have a brief conducted tour. By the way, I want you to change the furniture round, get new curtains, that sort of thing. It's your home now. Remember that.'

Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I do love you,' she said. ‘I'll do my best, I promise you. I'll love Riverstown because it's yours.'

‘That's my girl,' he said. ‘Try this cake. Mary makes the best fruit cake in Ireland.'

She cut a slice to please him. It tasted heavy and there was too much whiskey in it for her taste. ‘Mine's better,' she thought. ‘But I can never go into my kitchen and cook for my husband. I can't stand and gossip with Dadda's old cousin and make a fruit cake from Mammy's recipe. I'm Mrs Arbuthnot and my whole life is changed for ever. Thank God I love him, or I'd be out of this house and home before you could say “knife”. And I can't talk like that any more either.'

‘Phil,' she said softly. ‘Let's go on that tour. I want to see our bedroom.'

Only it wasn't theirs. It was a big room with a high, moulded ceiling and a draped bed that stood in the middle of it like a throne. The surfaces were bare; the mahogany gleamed with fresh polish. His mother had left nothing of herself behind. No photographs, no knick-knacks gathered over the years. But it was still her room.

‘Mother didn't change things much,' he said. ‘The room could do with a turn-out.'

‘Blue is a dark colour,' Eileen said at last. ‘It could be prettier a pale shade. A new carpet maybe …'

Anything to take the presence of the Hon. Blanche Arbuthnot of Dankelly Castle, Co. Louth, out of the room where Eileen was expected to lie in bed with her son.

There was a conference going on in the kitchen. Tea had been made and a big cake like the one served in the library was cut up in thick slices on the table. Lily was holding forth, her pinched face sallow with indignation. The expression ‘white-livered' was an apt description of her nature.

‘And there she was, sittin' there playing the high an' mighty madam, cocked up in Mrs Arbuthnot's chair. Eight o'clock please, Lily …' She mimicked Eileen's voice. ‘Mrs Gerard was right to pack her bag and go. If ye'd seen the airs and graces of her!'

She drank her tea and held out the cup for one of the under-maids to fill. She was a tyrant to the girls. Doyle, who tipped his tea into a saucer, looked up over the rim of it.

‘I mind her father,' he said. ‘Dirty as the auld pigs he tended to, not a penny to bless himself, till his auld skinflint uncle died and he got a hold of the place. He married a bit o' money though. Sure an' they must be pleased seein' the geddle come up in the world like she has.'

He wasn't a malicious man. The searing jealousy of the women didn't affect him. He liked a good gossip and knew something about everybody in the area. He was the same age as old Jack Ryan and well remembered the smell of the pigs he brought with him into the pub of an evening. Jack had been his uncle's heir. He was a rich farmer now, while Doyle was still dirt poor and broke his back in the Arbuthnots' garden with only a lazy boy to help him. If he resented anything it was Jack Ryan's meanness. If he saw Doyle in the pub he'd slide out of buying him a drink.

Mary sat with her elbows on the kitchen table. Her arms were plump and mottled, fat hands cradled the teacup.

‘They even brought Father Dowd to her,' she announced. ‘Divil a bit of good it did. She ran off breakin' my poor cousin's heart.' She slipped in her relationship to the new mistress with a mixture of satisfaction and gloom. It didn't please Lily or the other maids to hear her claim superiority over them.

‘Ye must be shamed out of yer life, Mrs Donovan,' Bernadette piped up from her corner of the table. She was next in line to Lily, five years older than the girl who had come to Riverstown and had the whole world in her pocket, so far as Bernadette could see. All that money, and the fine clothes on her, and a gentleman for a husband. She was damned to hell, of course, she comforted herself. Marrying outside her faith.

‘Ah, well.' Mary decided privately that that Bernadette needed putting in her place. ‘I've dinner to get for the new master and his lady wife. And to clean up my kitchen before she makes a tour of it. Doyle, ye've got mud on my floor from yer dirty boots!'

‘I don't know how I'll bring meself to serve her,' Lily grumbled. ‘Sitting in Mrs Arbuthnot's place at the dining table. I'd like to tip the soup in her lap!'

‘I'd mind yerself, Lily,' Doyle said at the kitchen door. ‘It's himself we've got to please, not her. He'll not put up wit' yer nonsense any more than the Major would.' Philip's father had served in the Irish Guards in the First World War, and was always referred to by his rank. He glanced resentfully at Mary Donovan. ‘There's divil a bit of mud on me boots,' he muttered and went out into the back yard.

Upstairs, Eileen resisted as Philip tried to undress her. ‘Not in here,' she whispered, avoiding his eager kisses. ‘Can't we go somewhere else?' In the end they made love in his father's dressing room, confined on a narrow bed, and Eileen fell asleep. He woke her gently, smiling at her.

‘You are a little tiger,' he said. ‘You've scratched me to bits. We've got to change, darling, so you'd better get up.'

He saw her bewilderment and said, ‘We always change for dinner at home. I know it's a bore, but it's expected. Have your bath, sweetheart, and wear something nice for me. How about the blue we bought together?'

It was a tactful way of explaining that change meant evening dress for her and dinner jacket for him. Poor little sweet, he thought, splashing in the hot water in his father's bathroom. It was all very strange to her, but she'd soon get the hang of it. She didn't mind him telling her things, and learned very quickly. She had modelled her speech on his and asked him to correct her if she said something wrong. Her clothes had been a problem. That was solved by buying a complete new wardrobe. She was so pretty it didn't matter what she wore. Nothing at all, was better still. They were going to be late, unless he put that thought aside and got ready.

He gave her a glass of champagne in the drawing room before dinner. She looked very beautiful in the long slim blue dress. He'd given her a string of cultured pearls as a wedding present. His mother had taken all the family jewellery with her. There was a little blue brooch pinned to the neck of the dress. It didn't complement anything much, but he hadn't seen it before.

‘Where did you get that, darling,' he touched it lightly with a finger, as if it were a toy out of a cracker. She had the brightest smile in the world, and the dress made her grey eyes look blue.

‘It's my granny's,' she explained. ‘She give it to me on my eighteenth birthday.'

‘It's very pretty,' Philip said. ‘Grandmother, darling, not granny. It makes you sound like a little girl. And she
gave
it to you.'

‘Sure an' I know she did.' Suddenly, cheekily she spun round in front of him, mocking his attempts to turn her into an Anglo-Irish lady. ‘Ye'll not make this particular sow's ear into a silk purse, young fella-me-lad!'

Lily, about to knock on the door to announce dinner, heard them laughing and paused, listening. She heard Philip say, ‘Quite right, sweetheart. You've married a pompous idiot!' She couldn't make out Eileen's answer but she muttered, ‘Eejit, is right,' before she knocked on the door. ‘Dinner is served, sir and mam.'

They had been living at Riverstown for two months before the first invitation came. It was addressed to Mrs Philip Arbuthnot and a letter was enclosed with the card. It was written in a sprawling hand that was difficult to read. Eileen, who'd been beaten into writing legibly by the nuns, felt as if the writer didn't care whether her letters were decipherable or not. She knew the name, of course. The family were not rich; much of their land had been sold to pay the debts of successive wastrel sons. The baronetcy was a reward for acts of loyalty or oppression, depending upon which view you took of a small rebellion in the 1720s. They were old gentry, tolerated because they were permanently in decline and had fallen prey to drink and idleness. The family had been relieved of the embarrassment of a huge, unmanageable Georgian house by a convenient fire in the twenties. Sir William Hamilton was said to have started it himself, rather than repair the roof, which let in torrents of water in one wing.

The insurance company, refusing to accept the IRA as culprits, declined to pay. The family found themselves with a gutted ruin and one surviving wing. A local builder obliged by knocking down the remains in exchange for the materials he could salvage, and the place had been known as the Half House by local people ever since. The present Lady Hamilton was English and had some private money. Eileen read the letter slowly.

Dear Mrs Arbuthnot,

We hear that you and your husband are living at Riverstown since the poor Major's death and would be so pleased if you can come and dine with us on December 19th. It is a little close to Christmas, but that seems a good excuse for a party and it's high time we entertained some of our friends. We are so looking forward to meeting you and do hope you can come.

Sincerely,

Claudia Hamilton

P.S. I'll send you an
aide mémoire
if you can.

Eileen passed the letter to Philip. ‘What's an
aide mémoire
?'

‘It's a reminder; that's what it means, to remind you to come. It's a very nice letter. You'll like her, darling, she's great fun, marvellous horsewoman. He's a good chap, but he's mostly tight. I think we should go.'

‘All right,' she said. ‘If you want to.'

‘If they weren't nice people, I wouldn't dream of it,' he said firmly. ‘They'll like you and you'll like them, darling. Sooner or later, you've got to mix with our neighbours and this is a good way to start. Now, I've got to be off. See you at lunch time.'

He kissed her, squeezed her shoulder and was gone. She had been surprised how hard he worked on the place. She,
per contra
, had so little to do. There was a little hand-bell by her place; she rang it for Bernadette to come and clear the breakfast plates away. After that first tour of her new home, Eileen had avoided going into the kitchen as much as possible. Mary's attempts to be familiar with her when Philip wasn't there had been painfully embarrassing.

Sensing his wife's difficulty, Philip suggested she revert to his mother's custom and order the meals through Lily, as if she were the departed housekeeper. Lily's sour resentment was easier to manage than her blood cousin's attempt to presume and profit by their distant relationship.

And Lily's instinct for the winning side soon tempered her attitude to the new mistress. She became ingratiating and saw herself finally taking over the housekeeper's role. There was surprising strength in Eileen Arbuthnot. Shy and lacking confidence she might be, but she was not a woman to challenge outright and gradually the staff accepted her. They grumbled and gossiped among themselves, but Philip knew that his wife was in control.