Hungry Hill (32 page)

No doubt, when he was in the regiment, and with his grandfather living in retirement at Lletharrog, Henry had given an eye to the place; but now his grandfather was dead, and Johnnie was the head of the family, Henry could mind his own business.

“In future,” he said curtly, “all communications in regard to the estate or to the mines are to be brought direct to me.”

The tenants kept asking after Mr. Henry too, looking a little doubtfully at Johnnie, as if he had no business to be there, and was a stranger. Up at the mines it was the same. The former mining captain, old Nicholson, had retired long since, and his place had been taken by a manager, Griffiths, who showed him the accounts willingly enough, and appeared efficient and civil, but who when Johnnie asked some question about machinery, said “that Mr. Henry considered the plant wanted renewing, and perhaps Captain Brodrick would be seeing his brother, and find out what steps he had taken in the matter.”

“My brother,” said Johnnie, “is particularly busy at the moment getting himself married, and anyway the management of the mines has nothing whatsoever to do with him.”

“Of course, now you are home, Captain Brodrick, it is a different matter,” said Griffiths hastily. “No doubt you will see to things personally.”

And he began talking technicalities, and showing Johnnie figures, none of which meant anything much to Johnnie. But rather than betray his ignorance he nodded his head now and again, and asked questions, and put some sort of bold face on the matter so that the manager would learn his lesson.

“I’m damned if I’m going to be dictated to by Henry or anyone else,” thought Johnnie, and on returning to the castle he had all the servants in and cursed them, just to show them that he was not going to stand any nonsense. He was irritated when old Thomas informed him that if the Captain did not require his services he would go and look after Mr.

Henry and Mrs. Henry, in the house they had taken in Slane.

“Go by all means, if you want to,” he said.

“I don’t want to be served by people who dislike me.”

“It’s not that, sir,” said the old servant, looking uncomfortable; ? ‘tis only that I know Mr. Henry’s ways, and that with your being out of the country so longea”I might not please you.”

So Thomas departed to Slane, and so did one or two of the other servants, and Johnnie, in exasperation, sent for the batman who had looked after him in the regiment. He took charge of the house immediately, and shortly afterwards Fanny-Rosa arrived, with three more servants and all her luggage, and two or three dogs, announcing that darling Johnnie could not possibly live at Clonmere all by himself, of course she was going to look after him.

“You know, my darling,” said Fanny-Rosa, tucking her arm in her son’s, and walking up and down before the houses “what you ought to do is to marry. Some nice quiet, placid creature, who would give you dozens of children, and be about the place if you wanted her, but with no mind of her own to make an irritation.

She would not get in my way or in yours. There must be someone in the country who would answer the purpose.

Good family, of course. None of your upstarts.”

“I dislike quiet, placid women,”

Johnnie said, “and so do you; and anyway I’m too much of a ruffian for any woman to marry, so we won’t discuss it.”

“Henry and his Katherine are ideally happy,” said his mother. “It’s a pity you can’t be the same. A wife would steady you, give you more of a background.

I’m not a fool. I know what I am talking about.”

“I’ve no desire to be steady,” said Johnnie, “and if you are going to start lecturing me I shall remind you that this house is mine, and not yours.”

Fanny-Rosa glanced at him sideways.

Queer how mention of Henry and Katherine always made him stick out his jaw and smoulder.

“Don’t be absurd, darling,” she said, “you know I never lecture.”

But she made a silent resolve to question this servant of his discreetly sometime as to how much whisky his master was consuming, and where he kept the key of the cellar, and what he did with himself every evening, and whether he received many letters. The great thing at the moment was to keep Johnnie occupied. Fanny-Rosa wrote invitations to every neighbour within thirty miles inviting them to Clonmere to shoot before the season finished. Her brother. Bob Flower, who had married and settled down in Castle Andriff, her cousin, the Earl of Mundy, her other cousins, the Lumleys- everybody who might be induced to make some sort of companionship for Johnnie was pestered with letters and invitations, all claiming that “darling Johnnie was longing to see them,” and on accepting the invitations and going to Clonmere the guests would be greeted by their talkative, flamboyant hostess, dressed in every describable colour to clash with her vivid hair. Later, considerably later, in the day, they would be joined by their somewhat flushed and slightly incoherent host, who would be hearty and aggressive in turn, one moment laughing boisterously, the next plunged for no apparent reason in sullen gloom. And the guests would be diffident, embarrassed, uncertain whether they were expected to shoot or to order their carriages and go home. At any rate, when next invited to Clonmere they would find themselves otherwise engaged.

“Extraordinary people are,” Fanny-Rosa would say. “Last winter, when Henry and Herbert were here, they had friends over to shoot two or three times a week, inviting themselves. And now the same lot are full of excuses about the roads and the distance.”

“It’s not extraordinary at all,” said Johnnie; “it only means that they liked coming to see Henry and Herbert, and they don’t care about coming to see me. For God Almighty’s sake stop asking them. I can invite my own friends.”

And he would wander around with the keeper, and one or two of the tenants with whom he had struck up a queer familiarity, because there was no one else.

It was on one of these occasions that he came across Jack Donovan, whom he had barely set eyes on since he was a boy, and who brought back vividly the long-forgotten episode in the public-house in Slane. The fellow was little changed, still carroty-haired and impudent, and he stuck out his hand at once to Johnnie and asked after his health, although the gun under his other arm showed only too plainly that he had been poaching.

“Ah, now you’ve come back to us again, Captain, we shall see some sport,” said Donovan. “That’s what I was saying down in Doonhaven to the boys; there’ll be lively times ahead. Here’s the gentleman that will give some entertainment to the countryside.”

Johnnie laughed, although at first he had felt like hitting the fellow.

“You’d better join us, Jack,” he said, “and find the hares for us.”

“I’ll find you hares,” said the other, with a wink.

“I know the ground like the back of my hand, but I’ve been obliged to come here quietly, Captain, while you’ve been from home. It was Doctor Armstrong had the shooting here, and he’s no friend to me or my family.”

“Never mind Doctor Armstrong,” said Johnnie; “you can come and shoot as my guest for a change.”

The thought that his godfather disapproved of Jack Donovan was enough to make Johnnie claim the man as a friend at once. Uncle Willie had already made one or two brief appearances at Clonmere, each time adding another pin-prick to Johnnie’s mounting irritation. Did Johnnie propose to do this, did he intend to follow his grandfather’s example in that, and had he asked his brother Henry’s advice about the other? The truth of the matter was his godfather presumed too much on old times’ sake. He was over sixty, and past his job, thought his godson, and if he was not very careful Johnnie would have him thrown out of the place and the practice given to a younger man.

“What are you doing for yourself these days, Jack?” he asked, and the man shrugged his shoulders.

“You might well ask me that, Captain, with my elbows coming out of my coat, as you can see for yourself.

There’s no trade left in the place at all, and my father’s old shop that I have there on the quayside falling about my head. We’re thinking of going to America, me and my sister Kate. There’s nothing doing here at all.”

“You don’t have to do that,” said Johnnie. “I’ll find something for you at Clonmere. Now I come to think of it I want someone to live in the gate-house at the top of the drive. I sacked the people only last week for being uncivil. You and your sister had better move in.”

Jack Donovan looked up at him, his light blue eyes suspicious.

“Ah, you’re making a game of me, Captain.”

“I am not. Why shouldn’t you live in the gate-house?”

“Sure, it’s for you to say. The place belongs to you, Captain, and you can have what tenants you like, now old Mr. Brodrick is dead. He would never have had one of us Donovans in his gate-house, I can tell you that.”

“All the more reason to have one now,” said Johnnie, “and if anyone dares say anything against it, you can refer them to me.”

He thought very little more about the matter, until in a few days’ time the agent came to him in a state of great indignation, and said that Jack Donovan from Doonhaven, and his sister, had had the impudence to move their things into the gate-house, which he, the agent, had promised to one of the Captain’s tenants from Kileen, and would the Captain please give orders for them to leave immediately ?

“Certainly not,” said Johnnie, delighted to make the agent lose face. “I have given permission to the Donovans to take over the gatehouse.”

“It is not at all customary…” began Mr.

Adams, but Johnnie told him to go to the devil and went out of the room. That evening at dinner his mother brought up the subject again.

“What is all this nonsense about those dreadful Donovans trying to seize the gate-house?” she said. “The servants are full of it. You’re going to turn them out, of course.”

“I shall do nothing of the sort,” said Johnnie.

“Jack Donovan is a very good fellow, and happens to be one of the few people on the estate who appear to like me. They shall live in the gate-house as long as they want to.”

“But, Johnnie,” protested his mother, “the Brodricks have never had any sort of truck with the Donovans, you must know that. They are a horrible family. Your father caught his death from visiting one of them. For that alone I can never forgive them.”

“Because my father had the misfortune to catch diphtheria from one of the Donovans is no reason for me to dislike this generation,” said Johnnie. “I should have thought you would have had more sense. The most reasonable thing to do would be for you to go and see Kate Donovan, and ask if she is comfortable.”

“My darling boy, I’ve never spoken to any of the family yet, and I’m certainly not going to begin now. If she’s the sly-looking creature with flaxen hair I saw walking down the drive this morning, I don’t think much of her. You ought to have had the Mahoneys at the gatehouse. I like Mrs.

Mahoney. Why didn’t you ask my advice in the first place?”

“Because I prefer to use my own judgement,” said Johnnie shortly, reaching out for the decanter.

“It’s a great mistake,” said Fanny-Rosa, watching the amount that went into the glass, “to bring people up from the village who are nothing to do with the estate. I tried it with servants, and it never worked. After all, I ran this place at first, more or less on my own and later with Henry’s help, all the time you were with the regiment, and I do know something about it by now. Why don’t you finish the decanter while you’re about it?”

Johnnie put down his glass and faced his mother across the table.

“I think it is time,” he said, “that you and I came to some sort of understanding. For years we used to talk about living here together when my grandfather died, didn’t we? And now it has happened, and here we are. And you know, and I know, that it’s a failure.

It does not work. What do you propose to do about it?”

“What do you mean?” said Fanny-Rosa.

“Only that would it not be rather better for both of us if you went and lived somewhere else?” said Johnnie.

For a moment Fanny-Rosa did not answer. She played with the table-cloth in front of her, and there were two vivid spots of colour high on both cheeks. Johnnie watched her moodily, hating himself for what he had done, but knowing that he would never now take back his words.

“I see,” said Fanny-Rosa. “I’ve been getting on your nerves. It was a good thing you told me. Mothers are so blind.”

She got up, and walked over to the fireplace, and stood for a while with her hands to the blaze.

Johnnie suddenly remembered her as she had been twenty years ago, with that same cloud of hair, now dyed and patchy, falling about her face, and how, when he was a little boy, she had swept him up in her arms and held him close. He could remember the scent she used then, and the lovely cool smell of her skin. Now her chin sagged a little, and the powder, so carelessly applied, had sprinkled upon her dress, so that there were spots of it on the satin. His heart ached, and savagely, in his mind, he cursed the years that had come between them, that could never now be bridged; years that had changed her from a laughing, careless girl to this rather ridiculous figure of middle-age, that touched him only because of the past, not through the present.

“Well, don’t let’s make a tragedy of it,” she said lightly. “If you would rather be alone, thank heaven you said so in time.”

Johnnie wheeled round his chair, and stared with her into the fire.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “It is a tragedy. For years I used to think about this, and you being here with me, and what we would do together. And now that we are here, it’s a God-damn awful failure.

Isn’t that the greatest tragedy that can happen to anyone?”

They gazed into the fire, he with his glass in his hands, she with one hand upon his shoulder.

“I wonder,” she said suddenly, “what would have happened if your father had not died.”

And there was something in her voice that caught at his heart and made him look up at her swiftly and take her hand. But when he swung her round her face was smiling, there were no tears, and she began talking very rapidly about finding a little villa, perhaps in the south of France, for the autumn and winter. She had often thought she would like to do so. As a girl, she said, she had always spent winters abroad, in France and Italy. It had been most amusing; the only thing was that of course it might be rather expensive… .