Ruby Flynn (32 page)

‘Sit down, Mrs McKinnon,’ said Ruby, worried by how diminished she looked. ‘You look as white as a sheet, let us finish off. Most of the guests have left now and the drivers are outside in the yard. Some people are travelling all the way back to Dublin tonight and will be lucky to make it for midnight, if they don’t leave soon.’

Mrs McKinnon sank into the chair.

‘That Rory Doyle and his awful wife are just leaving. I cannot bear them. Did you ever hear a woman talk so much during a requiem mass? Irish women can talk and that no one can deny, but they know to shut up in the sight of God.’

Ruby frowned. It was clear that the arrival of Rory Doyle and his wife had irked Mrs McKinnon.

‘Give me five minutes with that man, I would tell him a thing or two. Ruined Amy’s life he did and he had the nerve to turn up at her funeral. Maybe ’tis his uncouth wife I should have the five minutes with. I would wipe the smile from her face and shut her up, I would.’ Mrs McKinnon shook as she spoke and twisted her handkerchief around until it resembled a rope.

Ruby reached out and took her hand.

‘Come on, Mrs McKinnon,’ she said gently. ‘I’m taking you to bed for a nap. Even if you only have an hour. It will make you feel much better. Come on.’

Mrs McKinnon tucked her handkerchief back into her pocket. A long sigh, followed by a dip in her shoulders told Ruby there would be no resistance to a suggestion that would have seemed ridiculous only a week ago.

‘An hour would be lovely, just to get my breath back,’ she said gratefully.

Minutes later, Jane almost fell into the kitchen, carrying a tray which was obviously far too heavy for her. She staggered to the table and laid it down with a crash. A week earlier, Amy would have yelled at her for doing such a thing. Adjusting her cap, Jane let rip with her opinion of the guests.

‘Jesus, if you listened to them all, they knew her so well they could even tell ye what time she went to the fecking toilet every day. One of them didn’t even know she had lost five boys, said it was four, arguing with the woman next to him he was. I’ve never seen one of their faces here before, ever, and I nearly said so.’

At that moment, Ruby returned from putting Mrs McKinnon to bed. ‘You won’t say anything to anyone, Jane. That is not our place. What you will do is make sure today goes without a hitch and stop swearing.’ There was a coolness and determination in Ruby’s voice, which had the desired effect on Jane.

She’s worrying me sick,’ Ruby confided, nodding towards the passageway that led to the McKinnons’ rooms. ‘If you had told me she would ever be like this, I would have laughed in your face. She is the strongest woman I know.’

Jane began to clear the tray she had carried into the sink without a grumble. In the face of despair and disaster, the balance of power had shifted. Ruby, without effort or compromise, had donned the mantle of responsibility.

Lottie stood at the sink, washing out the sherry glasses. ‘Maisie at the pub said that happens to people as they get older. She said sometimes a death can make a person grow old overnight and that some people, those who are really in love and have been together a long time, they die, one after the other, in minutes.’

Betsy was the next to enter the room, backwards, carrying two trays, precariously balanced, one on top of the other. ‘I’ve told the girls just to wait at the top of the stairs for now and Jimmy and Danny are carrying up two more trays of drinks from the butler’s pantry. I hardly recognized Jimmy, he’s scrubbed up so well. Where’s Mrs McKinnon?’ There was a hint of surprise in her voice as she looked around the kitchen.

‘I’ve put her to bed,’ Ruby replied and an expression of understanding passed between Betsy and Ruby. Betsy would have done just the same had she been in the kitchen at the time. ‘It just got to her, Betsy,’ Ruby said. ‘I wish Amy was here, she would know what to do with Mrs McKinnon and how to help her.’

And that was when it hit her. Amy wasn’t there and no matter how hard they prayed or wished for it, Amy never would be again. Ever. She wasn’t in the next room, or down at the cottages visiting her mother. She wasn’t to be found in the cool room, or counting the sacks of flour, stacked like a row of praying monks in the larder. She was nowhere. She was gone. Forever. Speaking Amy’s name out loud, in the kitchen where she had spent all of her waking hours, was almost too much. They were interlopers in Amy’s kitchen and Amy had gone. Ruby felt the floor shift and her world tumble. Without any warning, she found herself sobbing. Her heart physically hurt, so much that she put her hand up to her chest. It was a pain induced by grief and longing and yet she had known Amy for very little time compared to Jane and Betsy. As the four girls now hugged each other tight, Ruby wondered,
What is happening to us? We are all falling apart
.

*

‘That’s the last of them, Lord Charles,’ said McKinnon, as they walked back up the steps. ‘I think it can be said that despite the circumstances, we gave the lady a wonderful send off.’

Charles didn’t reply, but stood and waved until the last car had turned the bend in the drive. It had not rained and the sun had shone. He was glad of it. His guests could return to England and not complain about the Irish weather at least. The smell of the earth, the food, the language the lack of heating and the infernal damp, yes, but on this occasion, not the rain. He turned to speak to McKinnon and realized, with some surprise, that he had already left and he was completely alone.

Desolate. There were times in Liverpool when he experienced a familiar sensation. That was when he stepped into second-hand clothes, and became someone else entirely. A man called Charlie. A man who dallied with a girl named Stella. A man for whom no one waited to return safely home. He felt lonely then, in Liverpool. But that was a different kind of loneliness, born of living with a pain he could not share with anyone.

He wondered now if anyone would notice or mind if he sat outside on the steps for a moment and then it struck him. Who was there left to care? His parents, his children, Isobel, all gone. The only people to show concern were those he employed and paid. Not a living soul cared for him. He housed and fed and paid for every kind word that would ever be spoken to him, in one way or another. He felt exhausted. Looking out across the lawn to the river, he could hear the water roaring as it gushed over boulders and pebbles. His gaze was immediately drawn to her, walking happily in the fading sunshine, his Isobel. They had never loved each other. Theirs had truly been a union of two lost souls seeking a life of stability and security, but the love they did create and share, the love of their children, could never be erased. It would always be there, within the ruined walls of Ballyford.

She moved across the mossy green lawn, carrying a laughing baby in one arm, snapping branches from the lilac tree with the other. She once carried them indoors and placed them in a vase in their bedroom and they both admired their scent and beauty. The smell of lilac came towards him now and filled his nostrils. It was pungent and overpowering, her parting gift to him. Now their sons, of varying ages, were running around her, laughing and jumping, trying to attract her attention. He could hear their voices shouting gleefully, ‘Mummy, Mummy.’ The sun dipped and they became black shapes against the light, framed in a halo of gold and then they turned towards him and he saw their smiling faces.

‘Isobel,’ he whispered hoarsely, his throat thick with tears. He yearned to be with their children. It was all Isobel had ever asked for and all she had wanted and in that moment, he knew, she had taken herself to them. It was as obvious as the day is long because it was what he had always wanted too. The realization dawned on him and made his heart beat faster. Isobel had killed herself to be with her boys, but Amy, she had taken Amy too. He had kept his true emotions deeply buried. Locked down by dalliances with Stella, buying ships and anything he could amuse himself with to distract his thoughts, but these things, they were not available for a woman such as Isobel. By running away from Ballyford. By involving himself in every time-consuming activity he could create, he had kept his real thoughts far away. Thoughts he had never allowed to surface and the words that ran around in his head, but remained unspoken,
I want to be with them too
. Isobel had, she always had. She was never afraid to utter the unspeakable. Words which terrified him, haunted him.

I want to die and be with my babies, Charles. They are cold, they need me. I have to be with them.
He ran from her because he could not bear to hear those words spoken. Once he accepted those words as real, he would be lost. He had wanted to crumble and die and to be with the children too and now he knew that Isobel had killed herself and had taken poor Amy with her.

‘Isobel?’ he shouted across the lawn. The images of Isobel and his children, blurred through his tears. ‘Isobel?’

But there was no Isobel. She was happy, united with her babies, doing in death what she had always dreamt of in life. A desolate and lonely Charles sobbed and shed the tears of a man who wished he was brave enough to join them.

*

Mr McKinnon opened the door slowly and saw his wife lying on top of the bedcovers, fully dressed, staring at the ceiling. He noticed that she was wearing her shoes. In all their years of marriage, he had never once been allowed to put his shoes on the bed. It was a sure sign, something was very wrong.

‘How are you doing?’ He spoke softly as he sat down on the edge of the bed and took her hand in his.

She turned her red-rimmed eyes towards him and they became washed with a fresh flow of tears.

‘What a day, what a week.’ She took her handkerchief from the bedside table and blew her nose and then pushed herself up on the pillows.

‘Do you know, when I saw them both before me, laid out on the floor, they looked as though they were sleeping, taking a nap, but I knew really, they were already dead. I feel so guilty, there they were, dead, and the first words I could think of were, “At last, it must be all over.”’

‘Hush now, hush.’ McKinnon put his arm around her shoulder. ‘You have not a thing in this world to feel guilty about. No one could have looked out or cared for Lady Isobel as much as you did. You did everything you could, even bringing in Ruby to watch over her all day long.’ Mrs McKinnon shook her head, as if to swat away his words.

‘It was all she ever wanted, you know, to die, but she would never have wanted to take anyone with her. It was the awful thing we used to dread, wasn’t it? The thing we ignored knowing that really, if we are honest with ourselves, we brought Ruby here not just because of who she was, but to keep her alive and watch over her for us. We knew she was a danger to herself.’

Mr McKinnon sighed and squeezed her hand.

‘If we really are being honest with ourselves, then yes, I suppose it was. It was after the last one died, I think, that things became worse. When she knew that Lord Charles would not tolerate anymore. When he began to spend more time in Liverpool, I think she knew there was no hope of ever holding her own child again. I don’t think she could bear that.’

‘Aye, well there’s more to it than that. Mrs Shevlin asked me to fetch her wedding ring, for the coffin. It has slipped off her finger during the past year, her fingers were so thin and I had put it in her bedside drawer. Look what I found in her drawer when I went to fetch it.’ Mrs McKinnon opened her own bedside drawer and pulled out two letters, both addressed to Lady Isobel.

A frown crossed Mr McKinnon’s face as he took the letters from his wife. ‘God in heaven what next?’ he muttered, opening the first letter. It was a folded sheet of rough paper, but the writing was clear and what was more, it was familiar.

I have information that your husband is up to no good when he is in Liverpool. I have taken the liberty of employing a private detective on your behalf and he will shortly write you a report. When you have this information, you should contact your solicitor immediately and protect yourself.

The letter was unsigned. ‘Who the hell do you think wrote this?’

‘Well, look at the paper,’ said Mrs McKinnon. ‘Do you recognize the writing.

The colour slowly left Mr McKinnon’s face. ‘My God, it’s Amy’s handwriting,’ he said, with alarm in his voice.

‘Aye, it is. There is no denying, it is. I think it’s all my fault.’ Mrs McKinnon reached for her handkerchief as the tears began to flow once more.

‘Amy wanted to leave once, you know, a few years back. She said to me, “God, I’ve seen nothing but this castle. I need to experience something of this world before I die.” I knew in my heart as God was my judge, she wanted to head to Liverpool and look for Rory Doyle. I persuaded Amy to stay, in truth, because I could not face having to work with another cook I did not know and look what happened to her. She never found Rory Doyle, but he came back to her and I know, as God is my judge, he put her up to that, but I will never be able to prove it. All he has ever wanted to do since that night is hurt the FitzDeane family.’

Mr McKinnon opened the second letter. It was from the private detective, confirming who Stella was and her whereabouts. Along with full details and times of when Lord Charles had been in her company. Mr McKinnon slowly folded the letter and placed it back into the envelope.

‘Aye, you can as good as smell him on the paper. Wicked words. Rory Doyle is behind this. There is no way Amy would have written that letter on her own. We know he came back a few weeks ago and that she saw him. We just chose to ignore it. He put her up to it. Dictated it, I would say. ’Tis all his fault. The man is a wicked menace and always has been, ever since that night the old lord got him to take Iona away, because he was scared to death of some stupid curse. None of this was your fault,’ McKinnon whispered. ‘We should remember only the nice times. It wasn’t you who never paid Rory Doyle his full amount of blood money.’

‘Aye, I know that, and we will. We will remember the good times. But we must face up to the fact, Lady Isobel probably meant to take Amy with her. She saw her chance when she was asleep in the chair. She and Amy had exchanged many notes over the years about the menu and food, in the days when we had the balls. In fact, didn’t Amy send a note upstairs with Ruby, only the other day, with the menu plan for the ball? Lady Isobel would have known that the letter was put there by Amy, for whatever reason it was, and Amy was too stupid to realize that Lady Isobel would have recognized her handwriting in an instant. Too blinded by Rory Doyle to see the obvious in front of her very nose.’