Tyringham Park (30 page)

Niamh invited Charlotte to a performance of Bach’s ‘Mass in B Minor’ where she would be part of the choir.

“Good enough to be a soloist,” said Lochlann, “but went the medical route instead.”

Niamh laughed her big, throaty, common laugh. “He would say that. No, the amateur status suits me – all the enjoyment and none of the responsibility. Besides, I wouldn’t be
good enough, so don’t mind him.”

At the performance Charlotte sat with Harcourt on her left and Lochlann on the other side. The shared chair-arm on the right occupied her more than the singing, which she found boring, all
sounding the same and no distinguishable melody to be heard. “Sorry,” said Lochlann when the pressure on his arm made him think he was taking more than his share of space. He folded his
arms and Charlotte felt bereft. When he once again became lost in the music, his arm returned and this time Charlotte made sure the contact between them was so light he wouldn’t notice,
though it was enough to keep her in thrall until the end. Harcourt could see what was going on in the semi-darkness, and felt mortified on his sister’s behalf.

Dublin
1939

In the months approaching their final exams Harcourt, Lochlann and Niamh studied together daily. Charlotte tried to disapprove of Niamh but was disarmed by her friendliness and
lack of guile.

Cormac belatedly paid his promised visit and after one look at Charlotte didn’t need to be told that she wouldn’t be returning with him to Paris. “Who’s the lucky
man?” he teased.

Charlotte painted with renewed dedication. Nominated by David Slane, she had become a member of the Society and was promised a solo exhibition within three years.

“Come and see what you think of this,” she was now able to say at any time to Lochlann, having run out of other inventive ways to coax him to her rooms. Harcourt and Niamh were
included in the invitation so it wouldn’t appear too obvious, and as it turned out, Niamh was the most knowledgeable and appreciative of the three. Charlotte then resorted to using larger
canvasses so that she could single out Lochlann to ask him if he could move or hang them, tasks she was well able to do herself. He always obliged without hesitation. Charlotte avoided looking at
both her brother and Niamh as she left Harcourt’s rooms to follow Lochlann to give him instructions.

An informal party to celebrate the final exam was held in the townhouse. Harcourt was the only one who had enough space to accommodate the whole year. Everyone came. Charlotte
was the only non-medical person there.

“That’s not like you,” Harcourt said, watching her gulp down a third glass of wine. She usually stopped at two. He hadn’t been very welcoming to her when she first
arrived.

“You’re right. It’s not like me. But then this night is not like any other night.” She filled her glass for the fourth time and avoided looking at his scowling face.
“It’s the end of a chapter.”

“Good riddance to all that cramming is all I can say. Roll on, the next chapter.”

The next one for you, perhaps, thought Charlotte, but there’s no next chapter for me. It’s all over.

After tonight the students would disperse and she would never be included in their company again. By September Harcourt would be relocated in London to specialise in neurology – did he
hope to make Edwina walk again? – while at the same time Lochlann and Niamh were due to become engaged before they headed off to Boston together to specialise in surgery. Who knew how long it
would be before they would meet again?

After her fourth glass Charlotte felt fortified enough to join the crowd that was gathered around Lochlann and Niamh. Niamh drew her into the centre and introduced her to the people Charlotte
didn’t know and then talked exclusively to her for half an hour. Lochlann broke in to excuse himself, saying there were some classmates leaving early that he wanted to see before they
disappeared out of his life for good. Niamh excused herself as well and went with him. Charlotte was left standing beside a female — one of three in the room besides herself — who did
her best to think up things to say to a non-medical person. Charlotte kept tracking Lochlann and Niamh as they made their way from group to group. The female beside her was claimed before long and
was absorbed into the crowd. Everyone had a lot to say to everyone else. Some of the conversation became maudlin. Charlotte picked her way through the revellers and took her fifth drink to a chair
that had been pushed into a corner.

A young man backed into her, turned around and said, “Sorry. Are you all right? Is there anything I can get you?” and when she said she was fine, thank you, just taking a rest, he
turned back to his friends and she heard him whisper, “Who’s she? I’ve never seen her before.”

By two o’clock Niamh had fallen asleep while sitting on the couch with Lochlann by her side. She had been revising until late the night before and had only managed to have a couple of
hours’ sleep. She had wanted to stay awake as it would be her last night with Lochlann for some time. She and her parents were leaving for Africa the next day for a three-month tour to
celebrate the completion of her degree.

The wine wasn’t helping Charlotte’s equanimity. She was finding it difficult to keep her mind off the dark days that would follow this night.

When someone vacated the place on Lochlann’s left side, she slid in quickly before anyone else had a chance to take it. Lochlann welcomed her and put his arm around her. He was already
three parts inebriated and in the height of good humour. She looked over at Harcourt and caught his steely, disapproving look.

By four in the morning she was the only person in the room who wasn’t asleep. Most students had left by then but there were about a dozen slumped on chairs or stretched out on the floor.
She was glad that Harcourt’s suspicious gaze wasn’t trained on her as she shook Lochlann awake and, with difficulty, pulled him to his feet and, motioning that there was something in
her room that needed attending to, guided his unsteady progress along the corridor.

Just one hour with him, that’s all she asked. Niamh couldn’t begrudge her an hour when she was going to have him for the rest of his life. Just to lie beside him on the bed, not
doing anything, not that he was in a fit state to do anything, moving in really close, putting her head into the hollow between his shoulder and head, and pretending, just for an hour, that he
belonged to her. It wouldn’t hurt anyone, and no one need ever know. Lochlann, true to form, wouldn’t even remember, so what difference would it make to anyone?

Lochlann received a letter from the teaching hospital in Boston to say his application had arrived two days too late, making him ineligible for enrolment until the following
year. There was no system for redress as all places had been filled.

Damn. Damn and blast.

Niamh had sent her application in on the same day, so she would have missed out as well.

He should have learnt his lesson about the consequences of late applications the time he arrived back from a holiday in Italy. By a week he missed enrolling at Earlsfort Terrace where all his
friends had gone, and had to settle for the Royal College where he knew nobody.

What to do?

He and Niamh had talked about working in Africa as volunteers with the Medical Missionaries and delaying their further training in Boston for a year. The nun they had spoken to about it said
they couldn’t work in the same mission unless they were married, to prevent giving scandal to the pagans the Church was trying to convert. Seeing they intended to marry in a year’s time
anyway, they didn’t see that as an obstacle. In fact, it gave the option an added appeal.

They could take up that alternative now. In Niamh’s absence, knowing her as well as he did and assuming she would agree, Lochlann took it upon himself to inform the Mother Superior that
they would travel to Africa and would be married before they left. He then wrote to Niamh telling her what he had done, sending the letter poste restante, hoping it wouldn’t arrive too late
for her to collect it. He would like to have included a description of the erotic dream he’d had about her on the night of their final exams, but it was too intimate to commit to paper, so he
only hinted at it and said he would describe it to her in detail when she returned. He had wanted to tell her about it the morning after the celebrations, but by the time he went to seek her out,
she had left the townhouse and he hadn’t seen her since. How he’d ended up in Charlotte’s bed he had no idea, but presumed it was habit that had propelled him there when he needed
to sleep. It was with relief he had seen he was alone in the bed when he awoke in the late morning.

His arms felt superfluous without Niamh enclosed in them. Four more weeks until her return. Their wedding night couldn’t come soon enough as far as he was concerned.

“Her Ladyship sent me down to tell you that you are obliged to attend dinner tonight, Miss, poorly or not. Her exact words.”

Charlotte retched into her handkerchief. Queenie picked up the basin beside the bed and held it under Charlotte’s chin. Charlotte heaved a few more times without producing anything, then
sank back onto her pillows.

“Can’t possibly. The thought of food makes me feel ill. Tell her that.”

“I already did. She said if you don’t come, she’ll send out for a doctor, seeing as Harcourt isn’t here to have a look at you.”

Charlotte wailed “I can’t let her do that!” and wept into her already sodden pillow.

Lady Blackshaw had wanted to know every detail about Charlotte’s indisposition and Queenie, alarmed that Charlotte was set against seeing a doctor even though her condition hadn’t
improved after three days, told Her Ladyship about the retching and the weeping, information she would normally keep to herself out of loyalty to Charlotte but was now relieved to pass on. Had any
gentleman been calling on Charlotte? Lady Blackshaw wanted to know. Lord Peregrine was the only one, Queenie answered, but that was over a year ago. Was she sure he hadn’t called more
recently? As sure as she could be, but then she wasn’t in attendance all the time so she couldn’t swear to the fact.

Looking down at the prostrate figure on the bed, Queenie was glad she had passed the responsibility for Charlotte’s health on to Lady Blackshaw. Things were looking serious.

Lord Waldron and Harcourt’s places at the dining-room table were vacant as they were spending the summer in Tyringham Park. Harcourt had left the day after the
end-of-term party as he wanted to make the most of his last long holiday before beginning his internship in London.

Charlotte sat opposite her mother, beside Aunt Verity. As soon as the soup was served, Charlotte put her handkerchief to her mouth, pushed back her chair and ran from the room.

Charlotte yelped when she saw Harcourt standing beside her bed, and covered her face with her hands. “What are you doing here?”

“Mother sent for me. She thinks you’ve disgraced yourself with Peregrine Poolstaff and wants me to find out. I don’t know why she couldn’t ask you straight out herself
and save me the journey.” Harcourt slammed a chair beside the bed but didn’t sit on it. “Well, have you?”

“No.”

“That’s that, then. Wasted journey. Just as well, I might add. His wedding was in the
Times
last week. Quiet affair. Married his rich cousin. It’s a wonder you
didn’t see it. His roof must have fallen in. Mother clearly doesn't know about the marriage and so got the wrong end of the stick.”

Charlotte turned her face to the wall. “Not exactly. I
have
disgraced myself, Harcourt. I’m glad you came. You’re going to have to help me. What am I going to do? I
don’t know what to do. I wish I were dead.”

There was a heavy silence. Harcourt stared at his sister and said with venom, “If you’re telling me what I think you’re telling me, then I can only wish for the same
thing.”

Edwina’s initial mildness on hearing Harcourt’s report vanished when she heard that the man responsible for Charlotte’s condition was not a still-single
Peregrine Poolstaff as she had assumed, but someone she had never heard of called Lochlann Carmody. The fact that he was Harcourt’s friend who had been coming to the townhouse for five years
didn’t soften the antipathy she felt at the mere mention of a name that didn’t belong to anyone in her circle. She assumed Lochlann was a social climber from the peasantry with an eye
on the Blackshaw fortune, that Charlotte had lost all sense of propriety in her desperation to be married and that the family would become a laughing stock when the facts became known. If the facts
became known.

A servant from the townhouse delivered a note to Lochlann from Lady Blackshaw, requesting his presence at his earliest convenience.

Despite Lochlann’s frequent visits to the townhouse over the years, he had rarely encountered Harcourt’s mother who generally confined herself to her apartments on the ground floor.
He had often wondered at the fact that every member of the Blackshaw family lived a separate life and could avoid seeing every other member of the family from one end of the year to the next if
they so wished, as evidenced by poor Charlotte’s bizarre three-year-long self-imposed internment. Reception rooms took up the whole of the second floor, Harcourt and Charlotte occupied half
the third floor each and shared a corridor, Lord Waldron lived on the fourth floor when he was in residence, and the servants were either down in the basement or up in the attic. Now Lady Blackshaw
had peremptorily summoned him, and he felt both puzzled and apprehensive.

It all came clear to Charlotte. She would break ties with her family, travel to England with Queenie, take on a new identity, have the baby there, keep it and rear it, and
never return to Ireland or have any contact with anyone here ever again. What a mistake it had been to tell Harcourt who by now would be informing their mother, who would then inform Lord
Waldron!

While she was waiting for her next wave of nausea to pass, Charlotte imagined what it would be like to be married to Lochlann. It would be a heavenly state, in which she need never fear
abandonment again. Her mother had handed her over to Nurse Dixon, her father was never at home when he was needed, Miss East had chosen Catherine and Sid over her, Holly left the townhouse after
Harcourt went to school even though she had been offered an alternative position in the house, Cormac opted to live in Paris and didn’t contact her for twelve years, and she never saw Manus.
If Lochlann were legally tied to her for richer for poorer in sickness and in health until death did them part, all the hurt she had suffered in the past would be cancelled out. In the same way
Cormac had done, Lochlann would enclose her in a warm orbit and keep away her nightmares.