Women of Courage (98 page)

‘Cathy, my dear, come and talk to young Simon here. He didn’t have much luck this afternoon - I think he’s been a bit put off betting by some of the things that happened to him in Flanders. Perhaps you can cheer him up.’

‘I doubt it, if he’s thinking of the war.’ Catherine had purposely been avoiding Simon all afternoon, precisely because she understood her father’s designs in inviting him. But a few words could scarcely hurt. Indeed, they might even have a healing effect. All afternoon, she had been aware of a dull ache in her chest, which had threatened to break out into agony once or twice, when she had seen a hand or the side of a face in the crowd that might have been Sean’s, until she looked closer and saw it was not. The only relief, as she had found with other types of pain in her childhood, was to throw herself with relentless determination into a bright, brittle surface appearance of energy and laughter. She might atone for it later, she thought, with floods of tears into her pillow; but not now, not in front of these people. She had too much pride, and her pride gave her strength.

‘What happened to you then, Simon?’ she said lightly. ‘Did you see the error of your ways, and wish you were at home, fighting for Ireland instead?’

‘I
was
fighting for Ireland,’ said Simon stolidly. ‘I volunteered; we all did. Ten thousand of us at least.’

‘There were nearly the same number of Englishmen stationed behind in the old country, to keep us all in order. Poor mathematics, was it not?’

Simon flushed. ‘I didn’t know you were a Sinn Feiner, Miss O’Connell-Gort. I should have thought with your family …’

‘I should have had different views. Yes, I know.’ She smiled at him sweetly, thinking: It’s funny how one man can be devastatingly attractive, and another, roughly the same size and shape, can look ugly as a toad. When that flush spread upwards, I’m sure the veins in his neck began to swell, and the pimple on his forehead looked as if it was about to burst. The thought amused her, and she said: ‘I’m sorry, I’m eccentric, that’s all. I just do it to tease. Now, what was it Father was saying you bet about, in Flanders?’

Whatever it was, she never learned, for Keneally coughed importantly at the door, and announced another guest.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, Major Andrew Butler.’

Catherine glanced around curiously. She remembered that her father had threatened to inflict three of these absurd suitors on her, but he had said that the third might not be able to come. Here he was, apparently. A dark-haired man in civilian clothes. Tall, broad-shouldered, rather athletic. And - sweet Christ! - his face was disfigured by the most horrendous scar. A livid line of white like a snake down the side of his face. Where did Father dig up these horrors?

The man caught her staring at him, bowed ironically, and stared back. She flushed, realizing how rude she must seem, and then another thought struck her. When he looked straight at her most of the scar was hidden, and the rest of the face, the undamaged part, was really rather attractive. Slim, strong, with a short military moustache, dark, slightly shadowed eyes that surveyed the room with a sort of …

What, exactly?

Whatever it was, there was something about them that had to be more interesting than gazing at the pimple on Simon le Fanu’s forehead, or talking to that emaciated stork David MacQuarry, who had so hilariously turned up with his own cheerful bouncing fiancée-to-be. No, she had to hand it to Father, this monster did at least look interesting. So when her father went forward to shake the new arrival’s hand and then turned to look for her, she did none of the things, like turning her back or striking up a passionate conversation with Mrs MacQuarry about furniture covers, which she might have resorted to if she had wished.

Instead, she smiled brightly, held out her hand and, feeling the ache in her heart sharpen, decided to challenge him unmercifully, in order to help herself forget Sean.

‘I’m so glad you could come, Major Butler. Father said you were a busy man. Forgive me, but you are in the army, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, I am.’ Andrew accepted a drink from Keneally, and frowned at her. ‘Oh, I see. The clothes, you mean. Well, we don’t have to wear uniform all the time.’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ she said. ‘I meant, if you’re in the army, I don’t see how you could possibly be so busy as to pass up an afternoon at the races. Most of the rest of our Imperial garrison was there.’

Andrew looked at her for the first time. He had declined Sir Jonathan’s ridiculous invitation to the races for obvious reasons: anyone might see him there, including Patrick Daly and the other three who had escaped from Brendan Road. He had only decided to come here tonight because he was bored, because there was very little danger of discovery, and because the Collins mission was almost certainly blown anyway. Tomorrow, or the next day, he would leave Dublin and go back to Ardmore, and see if he could patch up one of the cottages to live in.

And then decide what to do with the rest of his life.

In the meantime, for some reason, he was at a dinner party. He gazed at the young woman in front of him, trying to take in the fact that she, and the others in the room, were real, and not just passers-by in the street whom he could ignore. A delicate, sylphlike face, short black pageboy hair, red lips, wide dark hypnotic eyes. He remembered she had said something to him.

‘Sorry. What did you say?’

Catherine was piqued. Her dart did not seem to have got through. ‘I said, I don’t understand why anyone in the army can claim to have anything really useful to do.’

‘Oh, I see.’ With a shock, he realized that she was actually trying to be rude to him. The shock was compounded by a realization that he had not been in a situation remotely resembling this for a very long time indeed. There had been mixed evenings in the officers’ mess at Aldershot, before demobilisation, but that had been almost a year ago. And there had been that month in London, when he had visited almost every high-class brothel he could find, in an attempt to exorcise the German girl, Elsie, from his mind. He thought he had succeeded. Since he came back to Ardmore he had lived the life of a recluse, a celibate. There had been women around, of course, but only cooks and servant girls - he had kept his distance from them.

He thought he had closed that door in his mind and locked it.

Now, quite suddenly, he was faced with an attractive young woman of his own class. A quite remarkably attractive one, in fact. Fairly tall, slender, in a loose green silk dress which showed off a considerable area of neck and shoulder. A hint of a body that was lithe, athletic, overpoweringly feminine.

But it was the scent that really aroused him. She was wearing some kind of perfume that he had not smelt for a very long time, and which took him back, irresistibly, to Elsie, and the way she had unbuttoned a similar, cheaper dress, very slowly and suggestively, and then pulled it down, smiling as he watched, all the way down to her hips …

Something about his gaze caused the young woman in front of him to flush a light pink, and he thought
for Christ’s sake, get a grip
- this is a dinner party in Dublin, not a whorehouse.

And this girl’s probably a silly little Irish virgin.

Nonetheless he said: ‘Why are you being rude to me? Are you frightened of my scar?’

And Catherine, who had got quite a shock at the wolfish, yearning look in the man’s eyes as they travelled down her bare shoulders, said: ‘I couldn’t care less about your scar. If you join the army you must expect to get hurt, mustn’t you?’

Andrew was stunned. No young woman had ever said anything like that to him before. And truly, she did not look revolted. Only challenging, almost deliberately provocative. He said: ‘Why are you being rude, then?’

She shrugged. ‘Because - I don’t like the army, I suppose.’

‘So what
do
you like?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Horses, for one thing. You should have been there this afternoon.’

‘Why?’

‘It was a fine day. And I won fifty pounds.’

Andrew laughed. ‘Bully for you. What are you going to spend it on?’

‘Books, perhaps. Or some new paintings for this room. It needs some more, don’t you think?’

Andrew looked around the room vaguely. There were several large ancient portraits of noble ancestors, most of them turning a uniform mud colour under many years’ exposure to firesmoke and sunlight; and at the end of the room a slightly more cheerful one of a huntsman, with his horse and hounds, sitting proudly in front of a quite phenomenal heap of dead pheasants, ducks, partridges, rabbits and deer. It reminded him of a similar one in the dining room at Ardmore, and for the first time it dawned on him that this young woman might actually own this house one day.

‘Yes, surely,’ he said. ‘What are you thinking of buying?’

‘I don’t know. Something different from these, anyway. Perhaps a portrait of myself by Augustus John. Or a nude man by Modigliani - if he did any men.’

‘Now you’re trying to shock me.’

‘Would you be shocked to see a picture of a naked man on the wall? I see plenty of nude women, and I’m told it’s fine art.’

‘Yes, but - not in the living room, surely?’

For answer, she pointed across the room to a table by the window. On it was a sculpture, about two feet high, of an athlete throwing a discus. He was clothed only in a flat Grecian sunhat.

Andrew laughed. ‘All right, all right, I have no arguments. Install a life-size oil painting of a male nude over your mantelpiece if you like. I’ll come along and watch the faces of your guests, if I may.’

The laugh had an effect on them both. Catherine thought it attractive - cheerful, manly, a point in his favour. Andrew realized, dimly, that it was the first time anyone had made him laugh like that since - since at least before the fire.

But the ache in Catherine became sharper too. It was foolish to talk like that about naked men. She knew who she would want to model for any such portrait, and it was no one here in this room.

Andrew said: ‘You’re an unusual young woman, Miss - Catherine, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Am I? It’s probably because I’m a medical student, and used to thinking about bodies. Also I’ve spent a lot of time on my own, in the country, so I’m used to thinking for myself. And I’m a Catholic, like my mother. And a nationalist - a Sinn Feiner, in fact. So I would seem unusual to you, I suppose. In fact, I’m hardly suitable for you to talk to at all.’

He had expected a boring evening, full of tedious social chitchat. Not a full-blooded attack from his hostess the moment he came in the door. He looked at her closely, thinking: Why is she doing this? He remembered a nervous young lieutenant who had talked like this to keep his courage up, the night before battle.

He said: ‘Are you afraid of me?’

I would be, she thought, if I met you alone on a dark night, and you were looking for a woman. The eyes - it was the expression in them that set him apart. They were bright, watching her intently, but from somewhere very distant, deep within himself. Yes, I am afraid of you, she thought, but I have to face you down.

She said: ‘I expect I can shoot as well as you.’

Again, he laughed, and this time Sir Jonathan looked over, pleased. He had felt sure that Andrew would be a match for his wilful daughter; he had not guessed she would manage to amuse him.

‘With a pistol, I mean,’ she went on. ‘My brothers taught me to use one when I was twelve. I could outshoot them.’

He said: ‘I’ll take you on, then, one day, and we’ll see. Come to my estate, at Ardmore. The house is burnt down, but I still have a shooting range, and you can bring your own pistol, if you like. But it would have to be for a bet - something serious on both sides. You choose first, and I’ll match it.’

‘All right, then,’ she said. Her eyes held his, boldly. In her stomach, excitement flickered like an adder’s tongue. ‘But first I have to learn a little bit more about you, so I can decide what you would most hate to lose.’

‘Really?’ He raised an eyebrow, the scar whitening on his cheek. ‘Ask away then.’

She considered, pleased at the way her policy of aggression was paying off. ‘First, tell me why your house burned down.’

He began to tell her, briefly, but then Keneally announced that supper was served. At the table, it became obvious he would have to tell the whole party. It was a tale which expressed the inner fears of every Anglo-Irish landlord, surrounded as they were by a sea of poverty, envy, and Roman superstition.

Colonel Roberts, recently arrived from England, was appalled. ‘It sounds more like something out of the Punjab than the United Kingdom,’ he said. ‘Are you positive it was the Sinn Feiners who did it? These things can sometimes happen by accident, you know.’

Andrew smiled grimly. ‘All I know is, at least one of them was there on the night, and I’d marched them out of the house at gunpoint two days before. That house had stood for two hundred years before that.’

The solicitor MacQuarry, who, in addition to his moors in Scotland, had an estate in County Wexford, mentioned a similar tale he had heard of a house that had nearly been burnt there; and Simon le Fanu had heard of Unionist farmers’ crops being burnt, and the tails of their cows docked in the night.

‘So we have to show them,’ said Sir Jonathan. ‘Firm government action is the only way, plus a determination on our part not to be intimidated.’ He fixed Catherine firmly with his eye, trying to quell the explosion before it could erupt.

But she had made her views known to the Viceroy; she did not want to fight that fight over again tonight. She was more intrigued to learn about Andrew.

‘Where are you going to live, then?’ she asked.

‘I’ll rebuild the house, one day. Until then, I have a place here in town, and some cottages on the estate where I can camp.’

‘Why not leave, sell it all up, and go to England?’

‘Where to? It’s my home.’

‘Will you have the money to rebuild it?’

‘Not now.’ He looked at her coldly, with more distaste than before. She wondered what she would do if her own home were burnt down. But then it was not her own home yet; not until she had an approved husband. I wonder if I look like a good catch to you, she thought; a young girl with lots of money and a compliant father. And a Sinn Fein lover in the slums.