Ruby Flynn (16 page)

‘Well, I need to be brave, Amy, chopping an egg in your kitchen and helping myself to the salt the way I do. I’m always waiting for the roar when you see me.’

‘You cheeky madam.’ Amy grinned and Mary chuckled: she hung on every word Ruby spoke.

‘Here, grab a cuppa before you run back upstairs. Mary, stop gawping. Make yourself useful and pour Ruby some tea. It must be thirsty work, kneeling by the side of her chair for so long, trying to make her eat.’

Mary poured Ruby a steaming mug of tea and ladled three spoons of sugar into the cup. She stared at Ruby, watching her drink.

‘It’s not that she doesn’t want to eat, you know, Amy. When she pushes her tray away I know it looks that way, but I know her really well now. There is something stopping her. Perhaps it’s hard to eat when you are crying inside.’

‘Well, ’tis a sad state of affairs for the poor woman.’ Amy had dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘But she’s not the only one to suffer in this way. My mother had fourteen of us and only six lived past twelve years of age. I would say that was a lot harder.’

Ruby didn’t know what to think and so she waited for Amy to continue, as she knew she surely would.

‘And one of the women in the tenant cottages, pregnant six times and never carried one all the way. All born like pink skinned rabbits they were, drew a breath and died. There’s no one to spoon-feed her chopped eggs and that’s a fact. If she didn’t get out of her bed and carry on, how would they manage? If her husband didn’t work they would have no home or food in their bellies. No, the truth is, Ruby, melancholy is for the rich, not the poor and I’m not saying I don’t have any sympathy for her predicament, or that I didn’t love each one of those little boys. I did. Brought them down here to the kitchen, the nurse did and I held each one in my arms, before they died. Lovely little boys and there was never a father who loved his sons more than Lord FitzDeane, but life goes on and she needs to realize that and snap out of it.’

Ruby felt sad. She couldn’t argue with a word Amy had said, but she also felt deeply for Lady Isobel.

Amy continued. ‘I’ve always done my best for her, Ruby. I know you think I’m harsh, but surely ’tis time she thought about what is important, and in that I include Lord Charles.’

Ruby picked up her cup and finished the last of her tea.

‘Well, Amy, I can’t say any of that to her. I’ll just keep doing what I do, which is looking after her as best I can. I can’t think of all those other people, because I didn’t know them, I can’t allow myself to feel grudging towards her, because I don’t think it’s like that. Something serious is up, she needs me and my job is to look after her. There is something much deeper going on with the lady, I just don’t know what it is.’

‘Aye, you do that,’ said Amy. ‘Keeps you in a job too. Come on, pass me that cup and let’s not say anything of this to anyone else. Feelings are divided here as to how Lady Isobel should be treated. Mrs McKinnon won’t hear a word said against her. And you Mary, keep your mouth shut if you want a roof over your head and food in your belly. There are plenty of girls like you in the cottages looking for kitchen work.’

If anyone had ever bothered to give Mary a second thought, they would have known she was the most loyal of all the Ballyford staff. A loyalty soon to be put to the fiercest test.

Upon first sight, Mrs McKinnon forgave Charles for having been away for so long, and Charles now spoke the words he knew were expected of him. ‘I shall head straight upstairs to see Lady FitzDeane.’

Mrs McKinnon noticed he looked pale.

‘Was it a bad crossing yesterday?’ she whispered to Mr McKinnon. ‘He looks exhausted.’

‘Not at all, the sea was meant to be as smooth as your backside and they did make good time. He needs some of your care and Amy’s cooking. You have no idea the shite that woman in Liverpool forces him to eat.’

‘Merciful God, keep that language to yourself, will you,’ Mrs McKinnon laughed.

Upstairs on the gallery, all was quiet as Charles stood outside the door to the nursery, hesitating, with his hand hovering above the newly polished brass door handle.

‘The doctor has visited this morning as usual,’ Mrs McKinnon had told him before he made his way to the stairs. ‘He says the same thing every time he visits. She needs feeding up, lots of fresh air and to be forced back into living a normal life.’

Charles ran his fingers through his hair nervously. He knew what Mrs McKinnon thought. She had never voiced her feelings to him, but hadn’t she been the woman who had raised him? Didn’t he know her as well as she knew him? Her disapproval needed no voice. It was there, accusing him, whether she knew it or not, in every line on her face and in the tone of every word she spoke. She would prefer him to remain at Ballyford and to play the role of the dutiful and loving husband. She would never understand that Isobel blamed him, hated him and with her hatred for him, his own feelings for Isobel had perished and died.

Charles took a breath, turned the handle and entered the room. Isobel didn’t move as he almost tiptoed across the room towards her. She sat bolt upright on the sofa facing the fire and was as still as the gallery statues. It struck him how thin she appeared, even from behind.

As he neared her, he gently said her name, but there was still no response. He walked around the back of the sofa and sat on the chair next to the fire. Maybe she had spent her anger and there would be no further histrionics. He realized that he was holding his breath, just as he always did these days in the presence of his wife.

‘Hello Isobel,’ he said. ‘Did Mrs McKinnon tell you the news? I’m home for a few weeks. How are you feeling?’

His words felt distant, as though he were addressing a stranger. He didn’t know what else to say. After all their years of marriage, there was no subject they could broach which failed to evoke memories of desperate sadness. There was not a single holiday, Christmas, ball, birthday or event he could refer to without its being marked by the progression of a hopeful pregnancy or a funeral procession of despair. He could feel the pain in the room and he knew it would always be like this.
It will never leave us and she will always blame me
.

Isobel turned her head to look at him.

‘Hello Charles, it’s nice to have you home,’ she said.

Charles was stunned. This was not what he had expected. His wife had torn at his skin, beat him with the fire irons, spat and sworn at him, but not since the death of his last son had she greeted him. Maybe this was why McKinnon had been so keen for him to return, to see the improvement for himself.

‘Yes, it is nice to be back at Ballyford,’ Charles replied. ‘Is there anything I can get for you? Mrs McKinnon is bringing some tea just now, she should be here any minute.’

‘I don’t need anything, Charles. What I need you cannot give me.’ Her voice was almost pleading and Charles felt his heart slip. ‘I just need to see my babies and they need me.’

Charles remained silent. She had raised his spirits and then dashed them on the rocks of disappointment. How could he say the only thing that was true? That there were no babies.

Isobel turned back to the fire and continued. ‘Charles, they miss me, they are only babies, they always needed me. They are so cold in the crypt. You feel that, don’t you? You must feel it too?’ She whispered her words with an intensity that suggested they had been on her lips for weeks, just waiting for him to return.

Charles wondered if they would ever have a normal conversation again.

Welcome home, Charles
.
We have missed you
.
How is business?

Tears threatened to flood his eyes. Her words, her grief, the mention of the crypt, all of it. His sons had been put to the back of his mind when he was in Liverpool, they were part of a life from which he had detached himself. The things he ran from, the memories, were now crowding in, making it difficult for him to breathe.

We have you now. You are trapped
, the ghosts of Ballyford whispered.

He imagined the voices of his ancestors calling out to him from the crypt, chiding him for not visiting his sons. He had sworn he would never, ever visit again until he himself was laid to rest. Since the day he had laid the small coffin of his last dead son on the cold, Kerry slate slab, he had sworn that was his last. Now, he wanted to run out of the nursery door, down the stairs and all the way to Dublin, to catch the next boat back to Liverpool where there was no one who knew. To a life of pretence, free from the pain. Where he didn’t have to be Lord Charles of Ballyford, father of five dead sons and husband to a wife driven mad with grief.

Was his life to be devoid of normality for as long as he lived? Was he to be trapped within this circle of despair forever? He remembered how Isobel had run at him with a fire poker in her hand because she believed he had had her babies poisoned, just one of the many phases she had passed through. There had been others. She had alternatively blamed the maids, McKinnon, Amy, a witch, his father and grandfather. There had been so many phases of anger and blame, remorse and despair, that Charles had lost count.

There had been a time when he and Isobel were happy. When they spoke of their future. When they both cried with joy at the birth of their firstborn.

He had wanted to fill Ballyford with children and she loved his ideas of breaking with convention. Not for him the stuffiness of her English peers. Isobel needed no persuading to be a real mother. Many of their friends thought she had lost her mind. Well, thought Charles, if she hadn’t then, she certainly has now.

He had no answer at hand to respond to the madness contained within her words. As they sat there in silence, Mrs McKinnon walked in with the tea tray, followed by Ruby, who moved straight to the fire and threw half a dozen blocks of peat onto the dying flames. The normality of the familiar sound of Mrs McKinnon pouring tea through the silver strainer into the china cups was a welcome relief. Charles needed both the tea and a diversion.

‘You have a letter, Isobel,’ he commented, to break the heavy silence. ‘Is it from anyone I know?’

Isobel picked up the letter that lay on her lap and instead of handing it to him, as he thought she would, she slowly folded the envelope and slipped it into the pocket of her skirt.

‘No, Charles, not from anyone you know.’

Charles thought this was odd, but he was distracted by Ruby who had stretched across and picked up the fire tongs to push the peat blocks further back into place.

Watching Ruby brought the Ballyford secret to the forefront of his mind. He and Ruby were sitting in the very room from which his father had banished her mother, Iona, from Ballyford forever, when he and Iona were children. It felt like only yesterday. It was the shame of Ballyford and Ruby would never know.

His grandfather perfectly understood the nature of his son, Charles’s father. He had summoned Charles to his bedside and made him promise that Ballyford would always be responsible for Iona and that Charles would care for her.

‘Put right whatever your father will do wrong once I have gone,’ his grandfather had whispered. ‘Protect her.’

Charles had failed, but at least he had found her daughter.

Only days old, Iona had arrived at Ballyford one cold winter’s morning, wrapped in rags, with a note pinned to her shawl. She had been carried into the kitchen to the cook and the note and the child were promptly delivered to Charles’s grandfather. The note was chilling. It claimed the child belonged to Ballyford and that in order for an old and dreadful wrong to be put right, she should be taken in and become Ballyford’s own. The note struck the fear of God into Charles’s grandfather. He had heard the story himself, from his own father and from the moment the lonely man laid eyes on Iona’s face, he had taken her into his heart, the castle and his will. He had sent out to the cottages for the local apothecary, Miss McAndrew to come to his study. She knew things about Ballyford that others did not, as had all the McAndrews before her. Whatever they discussed on that morning was never repeated to anyone. He had been unable to help himself from showing the child adoring affection, the only baby girl to arrive at Ballyford for many generations. He also saw caring for her as the way to absolution. A man of many mistresses, he knew he had sinned often in his lifetime and the death of his wife had brought home to him his own mortality. All he had left in his old age were his disagreeable son, his adored grandson, Charles, and the beautiful baby girl, Iona, found in the stables.

Young as he was, Charles knew that his grandfather’s death wish was wasted. He had no power to force his father to honour the words of a dying man. What then happened was catastrophic and Charles knew that the people in the cottages whispered of the girl from the famine to this day, and claimed that here was history repeating itself.

But now, having failed in his promise to protect Iona, here was her daughter kneeling before him, stoking a fire. The sight of her lifted his heart and he slowly warmed inside as he watched her at the stone hearth. She must never know and yet he wanted to know her more. He closed his eyes, remembering Iona with her red hair.

‘Your tea, Lord Charles.’

Charles started and saw that Mrs McKinnon was placing a shawl around the shoulders of Lady Isobel and leading her out of the room. It was Ruby who held his tea.

‘Your tea, Lord Charles.’

Ruby said it again and as he reached up, he noticed her hair escaping in red tendrils from under her cap. He realized he must have drifted off to sleep for just a few seconds.

He knew that hair, and those eyes. Those same green eyes had belonged to her mother. Iona would have still been young. She had been his only company as a child and his closest friend. She had shared his nursery and Mrs McKinnon had looked after them both with equal care. Although she had been older, he had loved Iona and the loneliness he felt at her loss when she was taken away had never left him. Thoughts of guilt and self-hatred for not being able to save her were never far from the surface. Despite his pleas and screams of despair he had failed to persuade his father to protect her. His mother, who lived her own life in the London house, neither know nor cared. The whispers were that Iona was dead. Kidnapped. Disposed of. He heard them around corners of stairs and in the midst of huddled servants who fell silent as he approached. He knew they were untrue. It was wild cottage gossip. He could feel she was alive and what was more, she was nearby. Of late, thoughts of Iona had haunted him. She was always there, hovering on the edge. Entering his dreams and forming his nightmares. Iona had plagued him. Renewing his search for her yet again, it was no surprise to discover she was dead. He had known. He had felt it. He woke on the night of the storm and he had shivered at the eerie emptiness that filled the castle and he knew, wherever she had been taken, now she was gone.