Hungry Hill (29 page)

“I spent the afternoon, sir,” he said, “appreciating the beauties of Slane.”

His grandfather grunted.

“You were in the city shortly after two o’clock,” he said. “You must have walked three times round the place, and seen all there was to see by four. Open the window your side, my boy; the air is very close in here.”

He smells the whisky in my breath, thought Johnnie; now there’ll be the devil to pay. I shall have to tell him I felt faint, and was obliged to go into a public-house and lie down. Once more the outrageous laughter rose in his throat. His grandfather said no more, however. He seemed thoughtful, preoccupied, and rather unlike his usual self. Perhaps his interview with the manager of the bank had not been a happy one. It was hardly possible, though, with the copper mines bringing in twenty thousand a year. But his mother was always prone to exaggeration. Possibly the tale was completely untrue, and things were going badly.

Anyway, it was not his affair, thought Johnnie, and yawning, he closed his eyes and leant back against the cushions of the carriage, one hand on the window-strap for balance. He felt delightfully sleepy, incredibly content, and if that was the result of whisky and Betty Finnigan, what the devil would he be feeling like in a few years’ time, after he had seen service in the Dragoons? The world was not such a bad place, after all. In a very few minutes he was fast asleep, his face flushed, his black hair tumbled, and looking, if the truth be told, considerably less than his seventeen years.

He did not wake until the carriage rattled down into Doonhaven itself, when he came to with a start, recollecting the presence of his grandfather beside him, and was much relieved, and not a little surprised, to find that his grandfather had also slept, and therefore could not upbraid him for being an idle dog and a dull companion. It was a great temptation to tell Henry how he had spent his afternoon in Slane, but something prevented him: a faint suspicion that his younger brother, instead of shouting approval and patting him on the back, might draw away from him, puzzled, rather put off, and perhaps think less of him than he had done before. The family had dined, of course, and his grandfather had done so in Slane, so Johnnie, feeling that he could eat the house, fell upon the cold supper laid aside for him in the dining-room, and made non-committal replies to Henry’s eager questions about the afternoon.

The younger boys and his sister had already retired to bed, and when Johnnie and his brother went upstairs to the drawing-room to say goodnight, he found his grandfather standing before the mantelpiece, with a curious, rather embarrassed, expression on his face. His mother was seated in the chair by the window, and his aunt Eliza opposite her, and they had both put aside their work and were listening to the head of the house. Good Lord, thought Johnnie, he has found out about me this afternoon and is telling them… .

“Wait a moment,” said his grandfather. “Both you boys had better hear what I am about to inform your mother and your aunt. Sit down, will you?”

His grandsons obeyed. Copper John coughed, and clasped his hands behind his back.

“I don’t want to make a long story,” he said, “but will acquaint you in a few words with what has happened. I only propose to make a short visit this time, in order to see the mines and discuss the business there, and shall then return to the other side of the water. I shall, in the future, continue to reside there rather more frequently than I have done in the past, making, with your permission, Fanny-Rosa, my headquarters at Lletharrog. Eliza can use the house at Saunby, when she feels at liberty to do so. This house, of course, will be kept open for the entire family, and my grandchildren will continue to make it their home.”

He paused, and coughed again. Eliza seemed puzzled, and glanced across at her sister-in-law.

“What will you do, father,” she said, “all alone at Lletharrog? It is rather far for you to keep going backwards and forwards to Bronsea. That is why you moved to Saunby in the first place.”

“I shall not be alone, my dear,” said her father, “that is what I wish to tell you. Mrs. Collins consented to become my wife three weeks ago. We were married in Bronsea, and moved out to Lletharrog afterwards. She is a dear, good, faithful woman, and devoted to me. I am very glad indeed to call her Mrs. Brodrick, and I hope you will do the same.”

For a moment there was a great and dreadful silence.

Then Fanny-Rosa said, “Good God!”, and Eliza burst into a torrent of weeping.

“Oh, father,” she said, “how could you! Mrs.

Collins, your cook, how shaming, how disgraceful, after all these years! What will people say, all our friends in Saunby? They will never speak to any of us again.”

“One thing is certain,” said Fanny-Rosa: “the news of this will kill Barbara. We shall have to keep it from her somehow.”

“Barbara knows already,” said Copper John quietly. “I told her this evening when I went to her room. She appeared fully to understand.”

“If she had not become an invalid this would never have happened,” wept Eliza. “It is because she lay here, with me looking after her, that you became so dependent on ‘

And once again she was choked by tears.

“Of course,” said Fanny-Rosa, “your father is entitled to do as he pleases. It is not as though Mrs. Collins is a young woman, who might .

What I mean to say is, this new arrangement cannot affect Johnnie in any way, I suppose?”

“I assure you,” said her father-in-law, “that Johnnie’s interest will be affected in no way whatsoever, nor yours, Fanny-Rosa, nor yours, Eliza, nor those of any member of my family.

I am seventy-five years of age. My wife is fifty. I shall, very naturally, make provision for her in my will, but nothing that I leave to her will be taken from any of you.

As to our friends in Saunby and elsewhere, Eliza, you need not worry on that account. We shall live very quietly in Lletharrog, and Mrs. Brodrick will never move anywhere else. It is not even necessary for people to know that I have married again, if you do not wish to tell them. I do hope and trust that none of my family will feel ill-will towards the woman who has so kindly consented to become the one companion of these last years of mine.”

No one answered. He looked from one to the other, and then across at his two grandsons. Thomas came in to draw the curtains. As he drew them with a click across the window there was something of finality about the sound, thought Henry, like the end of an epoch. Nothing would ever be quite the same again. Clonmere would continue, he and Johnnie and the boys would come there to spend their holidays, but their grandfather would not be with them. The library would be empty, the hall table bare of the nobbled stick and the shovel hat, and in the little farm-house at Lletharrog across the water his grandfather would be sitting opposite his cook, that large-faced, cheerful woman with the red hands, who made such excellent scones, and had that awful sing-song Bronsea accent. ‘

Thank the Lord, thought Fanny-Rosa, that he has decided to live at Lletharrog and not bring her here. It won’t affect any of us, and I can do as I please with this place. A mercy she was not a young woman, who would produce a family. Old men were such idiots, and one never knew… .

It’s all very well, thought Eliza, to say I am to have the house at Saunby. There is nothing I should like better, provided he allows me enough money to run it, but he is always so close, and anyway I cannot very well leave Barbara, although I am certain it is only a matter of a month or two now. But I must try to be firm, and get him to allow me sufficient to live in some sort of style in Saunby. After all, I shall be the only one to survive of all his children.

“If,” said Copper John slowly, “no one has anything more to say, I will wish you all a very good night. We will meet at breakfast at eight o’clock.

I shall be going up to the mines as usual.”

He kissed his daughter and his daughter-in-law, and shook hands with his grandsons, and went from the room.

Johnnie could hear him walk downstairs and shut the library door behind him. Poor lonely old bastard, thought Johnnie; poor old devil, with no one to give him comfort all these years, his wife some thirty years in her grave, and his sons and his daughters dying off one by one. This is the fellow I’ve hated and been afraid offor as long as I can remember, and he’s human after all. He’s like me, he wants the same things, the same comfort. He is not God Almighty, and never has been; he is only a poor, tragic, lonely old man. And good luck to him, thought Johnnie, good luck to him and his cook; mother and the aunts could look as shocked as they liked and say what shame it brought upon the family.

They did not know what the old man must have suffered, they did not understand… .

“I say, it’s pretty awful, isn’t it?” said Henry, as the two brothers undressed and got into bed.

“Rot!” answered Johnnie; “why shouldn’t he do what he wants?”

“It will seem so queer,” said Henry, histo come here for the holidays and not to see grandfather. I hate changes. I like things to go on being the same.”

Johnnie did not answer. He lay on his back with his hands behind his head, and through his mind, in a turmoil, raced the events of the afternoon. Driving the horses, walking the streets of Slane, seeing Jack Donovan and his friend, going into the public-house, having those drinks, and that girl. And then his grandfather’s news on top of it all, seeing his tragic, lonely figure, and the thought of leaving Eton, of going into the Dragoons in a few months’ time perhaps, of fighting abroad.

Henry was soon asleep, but perhaps because he had slept in the carriage coming home, Johnnie tossed and turned on his bed, his mind more wakeful, more disturbed as the hours passed, and always he seemed to see the grinning, ginger-headed Jack Donovan thrusting his offensive face close to his own and asking him to have another drink. When the stable clock struck three Johnnie sat up and threw aside his bed-clothes.

Henry did not stir, and the house was still and quiet.

“I wonder,” thought Johnnie, “if there is any whisky in the cellar.” He went out into the corridor, and crept to the top of the backstairs.

They felt cold to his bare feet. He listened a moment, and heard no sound. Stealthily, furtively, he felt his way in the darkness to the kitchen regions. Somewhere a clock was ticking.

He put his hand out and touched the cellar door. And for once in his lifetime Thomas had neglected his duties. The key was in the cellar door’, On the second of December, 1856, a cab turned into St. James’s Street from Piccadilly, and from thence into Pall Mall, stopping at length before number 17a, which was at that time bachelors’ chambers. It was a dark, wet evening, and the driver rang the bell and waited for the janitor to answer it before he opened the door for his passenger to alight. “Dirty night, mum,” he said conventionally, holding out his hand for his fare. And as she dropped the silver into it and said “Thank you, my good fellow,” with an air like a queen, he grinned, and watched her climb the steps of the building, for she could not have a notion how she looked, with that bright purple velvet cloak round her shoulders and the bonnet that was meant to be the same colour perched sideways on her brilliant hair. Mark you, he said to himself as he whipped up his horse and clattered away down the wet street, I dare say she was a rare good-looker in her day, and there were not many women about who tipped half-a-crown, or men either, for that matter.

“Captain Brodrick is not yet returned, madam,” said the janitor. “He said if you came you was to wait, he would not be very long. He’s having a hair-cut, I believe, madam, down in Jermyn Street.”

“I hope then,” said Fanny-Rosa, “that he doesn’t let himself be cropped like a convict.

What’s the use, I say to him, of having a head of hair like his, and then shaving it off, as though you were doing time? Pray light the gas. The room is like a morgue. What does Captain Brodrick do with himself in such a poky place, I wonder? But I suppose you won’t tell me if I ask?”

She laughed, and peeled off her gloves.

The janitor looked uncomfortable. The lady was Captain Brodrick’s mother, and though she seemed somewhat unconventional, it would hardly do to discuss the Captain’s behaviour. He watched her as she adjusted her bonnet in front of the looking-glass, and, opening a small handbag, flecked some white powder on her face. The result was not very happy.

Fanny-Rosa caught his eye in the looking-glass.

“What’s the matter?” she said sharply.

“Nothing at all, madam,” replied the janitor, and, bowing, he closed the door behind him.

“Damn fool,” muttered Fanny-Rosa, and smoothed away the excess of powder. She gave a twitch to her cape, and fastened the brooch on the face of it. It was a handsome diamond brooch, Johnnie’s regimental badge. The pin was always coming undone. She knew she would lose it one day.

She began to walk round the room, picking up the objects on the mantelpiece, opening boxes and examining pictures. Johnnie’s desk was shut, but the key was in the tobacco jar on top of it.

Fanny-Rosa opened it, humming a tune to herself as she did so. Papers, and envelopes, and pieces of blotting-paper scattered in all directions.

“Hopelessly untidy,” murmured his mother, “exactly like me.” There were several bills, none of them paid apparently, and all to account rendered.

Fanny-Rosa read them all. There were one or two invitation cards, which she scrutinised, and a letter, obviously written in a feminine hand, accusing him of neglect and signed “your loving little Doodie.”

Fanny-Rosa smiled. Loving little fiddlesticks, she thought. In one drawer she found a doctor’s prescription which intrigued her but unfortunately could not be deciphered, and a box of pills that she smelt and tasted but found disagreeable. A step outside startled her for a moment, and she slammed down the desk and began to hum loudly and turn again to the looking-glass. But it must have been the janitor going about his business. The rest of the desk was disappointing.

The drawers were filled with maps and military text-books and orders. Fanny-Rosa turned her attention to the cupboard. It held clothes.