The Blood Upon the Rose (39 page)

She tried to study, but the words slithered meaninglessly around on the page, defying her to make sense of them. She had nothing else to do. She sat on the green window seat overlooking the gardens of the square, and tried to sketch a portrait of Sean which she had planned, but after a few strokes of the charcoal she smudged it, and flung it face down on the floor. She wept, and wondered if this was the way her mother had felt. At least her father had left her mother for another woman; was that better, or worse, than being rejected in favour of an ideal?

Evening came. The fire died down to a few smouldering ashes, and the only light in the room came from the misty yellow gas lamps in the square. A cold, sleety drizzle was falling outside. Catherine sat motionless in the window seat, her knees drawn up to her chin, gazing moodily out at the ghostly trees and scurrying pedestrians.

There was a knock at the door. When she did not answer, it opened, and her father came in.

He said: ‘I thought I might see you at dinner.’

‘I’m not hungry. I told Keneally that, hours ago.’

‘He told me you ate nothing for lunch, either.’

‘So?’

Sir Jonathan sighed. He considered lighting a lamp, but decided it would provoke an outburst he did not want. He sat down quietly on a sofa, thinking how pale, almost white, its normal lemon colour appeared in the semidarkness. The room was cold, he thought, but oddly restful.

He said: ‘That inspector from G Division phoned. He told me you visited Brennan in gaol today.'

‘Yes. He was there, smirking.’

‘Brennan's to be charged with illegal possession of firearms and membership of Sinn Fein, that’s all. They’ve no evidence for anything else.’

‘Good.’

‘It’ll still put him away for four or five years. Damn good thing too.’

No answer. Sir Jonathan shivered. This room was really very cold. No wonder she was hunched up like that. He bent down and put a few small logs on the fire, carefully, in a pyramid over the embers, so that they would blaze up as soon as possible. He watched the flames begin to lick upwards, and held out his hands to them, wondering how best to put what he had to say. His anger had faded over the last two days, leaving a slight sense of pity, and a calm determination that he had been right all along, and that things were going to go his way. It was like that moment in breaking a young horse, when the trainer senses the fight will be won.

He said: ‘I want you to go to Killrath tomorrow.’

‘What?’ Catherine sounded confused, as though she had been thinking of something else entirely.

‘You heard. I’ve rung Ferguson already. He’s expecting you.’

‘What are you talking about? I can’t go to Killrath.’

‘Of course you can. You’re doing no good here. I doubt if you’re studying much, and you don’t even eat. A breath of sea air will do you good. Also …’

‘Father, I’m not going!’

The outburst was brief, as he had expected. Defiant, but without the strength of will which he had known in her. He continued, stolidly: ‘Also, I’ve come to an arrangement with that Inspector Kee. He could quite easily charge you with aiding and abetting, you realize that, don’t you? But if I agree to take responsibility for keeping you somewhere out of the city for a while, he’ll drop all charges and leave you alone. No more interrogations, either.’

‘I’m not afraid of him, Father. Anyway, I can’t go. I’ve got lectures to attend, books to read. It’s nonsense.’

‘Take your books with you, by all means.’ The fire was blazing nicely now, the flames sending out a little colour into the room.

Sir Jonathan stood up to warm his backside in front of it. In the firelight his legs made huge, dancing shadows on the opposite wall.

‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘There’s another thing, far more important than all of that. I’ve deliberately left it alone for the last two days because I could see you were in shock, and upset. But it's time to settle it clearly.
You listen to me, now!’

He had not meant to shout, but she had turned her head away to stare out of the window. It was like the way she had put her hands over her ears, as a little child - it had made him furious then. He controlled himself with an effort, and went on.

‘We made a deal about your inheritance, and by your relationship with this young Sinn Feiner, you clearly broke it. I don’t want to hear any more about what you did or didn’t do with him; I’m a man of the world, I suppose, and can imagine for myself. The point is, you should have done nothing. Now, the main part of our deal was that if you did not live up to expectations, you would be disinherited, and the estate would be settled on someone who better deserved it. I can still do that, you understand! I can order Keneally to throw you out of the house tomorrow, and you can find your own accommodation with your Sinn Fein friends. And by God I swear I will do it, Catherine, unless you change your ways immediately.
Do you understand me?’

There was a silence. He wondered if he had sounded hysterical rather than firm. But if he had learnt one thing in life about how to deal with horses, soldiers, and children, it was that you should never make a threat unless you are prepared to carry it out. He had not been a good parent to Catherine, he knew, but he hoped she had seen enough of him to know he meant what he said.

‘Change my ways how, exactly?’

He breathed a small sigh of relief. If she had not answered, he might have lost her. But now she had taken one small step in his direction, he could lead her where he wanted her to go.

‘First, go to Killrath. Second, agree that you will not see this young Brennan again.’

There was another long silence. It was the second thing he thought she would find hardest. He was prepared to agree to allow her to write to him, if necessary. He could not prevent it anyway.

She swung her legs off the window seat to the floor, and sat staring at him bleakly, her arms holding the seat by her sides. ‘All right, father. What time is the train?’

If he had been a demonstrative man he might have hugged her, and that might have made a difference. But he was not, so he said: ‘The train leaves at 9.30. I’ll come with you to the station. Be sure you are ready.’ And left the room.

This is the end of it all, she thought.

21

KILLRATH, IT SEEMED to Catherine, had been invaded. All the way down from Dublin on the train, she had thought of the great house ahead of her as a refuge. She would be able to sleep again in the room she had had as a child, ride Grainne along the cliffs and sands, wander the great rooms and gardens at peace, with only the wind to disturb her. The pain of the past weeks in Dublin would fade, the Atlantic gales would clear her mind.

That was what she hoped. She had known Andrew Butler would be there but she had not thought about him at all, all the long day in the train. But when she came out of the station at Galway there he was, lounging against the bonnet of her father's car.

It was a cold, blustery day. He wore a long belted Burberry coat with the collar turned up, leather gauntlets and a motoring helmet with the goggles pushed up on to his forehead. She saw that despite the weather, the canvas roof of the car was rolled back.

He smiled at her, teeth gleaming white under the scarred cheek and thin moustache, and made a mock salute.

‘Good afternoon, Miss Catherine.’ He took her suitcase, put it in the car boot, and held open the front passenger door. She stepped round to it, then hesitated.

‘Where’s David Ferguson?’

‘He’s at home. When your father telephoned I offered to drive down and fetch you instead. I thought you might prefer it.’

Home,
she thought. How on earth could this man speak of Killrath as home? It was her home, no one else's - even the Fergusons lived in a house in the grounds. A worm of fear crawled in her stomach. She glanced at the car irritably.

‘Why is the roof down? Can’t you put it up?’

‘I can if you like, but I prefer the fresh air. Don’t you?’

‘Not when I’m dressed like this.’ She was wearing a three-quarter-length pale blue woollen coat, button boots, and a matching wide-brimmed hat secured with a pin. It would quite obviously blow away in the wind. ‘Put it up, please.’

She watched as he dragged the hood forward and clipped it in place. If he thinks he can mock me, she thought, I won't have that. There was something offensively relaxed and confident about his manner. It jarred with her mood. I’d forgotten about this, she thought. Did father realize it, when he sent me down?

She got in and sat quietly, staring straight ahead. He drove out of the town, whistling softly between his teeth and glancing at her from time to time. She felt his presence overbearing, an intrusion. All day she had been turned in on herself, thinking how foolish she had been with Sean, how cheap and tarnished she must look to the world. Andrew’s cheerfulness was intolerable.

‘Can’t you keep quiet?’ she said at last.

He raised his eyebrows. ‘I haven’t said a word.’

‘You keep whistling. It’s getting on my nerves.’

‘My deepest apologies.’

They drove on in silence. As they reached the coast a storm blew in off the sea, splattering the windscreen with hailstones. She thought he would stop but he drove on, peering through the little gap made by the wiper and rubbing the mist of their breath away with his glove. As the storm eased he went faster. She wondered if he was driving deliberately fast in order to impress her. If so, she didn’t care. He could kill them both if he liked.

He glanced at her briefly. ‘Your father told me you’d had a bad time in Dublin, but he didn’t explain how.’

‘Good. I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Fair enough. But I hope a few days down here will blow it away. It’s a beautiful part of the country.’

‘I do know that, Major Butler. I was born here.’

‘And you think I’m intruding, obviously.’ As they approached the rocky hilltop where they would catch their first glimpse of Killrath, he slowed the car and stopped. The hailstorm had just passed, and a dark indigo cloud covered the mountains inland. The house itself, still wet from the storm, sparkled in the pale evening sunlight. Andrew switched off the engine.

‘Why have you stopped?’

‘Just to enjoy the view for a second.’ He got out of the car, walked round to the front, leaned against the bonnet, and bent his head over his cupped hands to light a cigarette.

‘Damn you,’ Catherine muttered softly to herself. She wished she could drive but she had never learnt. She felt a fool just sitting there, waiting on his pleasure, her view obscured by the misty windscreen and his broad back leaning against the bonnet. What made it worse was that it was a view she had always loved herself. She got out of the car and walked a little way down the road, so that she could lean with her back against a rock out of the blustering wind.

There was a moderate sea, and cloud shadows chased each other across it, turning the waves various shades from a deep midnight blue to a cold steel grey. Whitecaps were bursting quite far out, and a cluster of seagulls followed an intrepid fishing coracle as it made its way precariously inshore.

‘You’re a lucky girl, to inherit all this.’

She looked round and saw with annoyance that he had walked down the road to join her. He leaned one arm against the rock, so that he could look at her and the view at the same time. He took a deep drag on his cigarette and the scent of the tobacco mingled not unpleasantly with that of the damp heather and spray.

She said: ‘It would have gone to one of my brothers, if they had lived.’

‘Your father told me. They were brave men, but unlucky.’

She turned on him angrily. ‘What do you know about it?’

‘I was there, remember? Not with your brothers, but at the front. Most men were unlucky, Catherine. Millions of them.’

‘So why were you spared?’

‘Who knows?’ He took another drag of the cigarette. ‘All I know is I spent a lot of time thinking about Ardmore, which is a place not as grand as this, but prettier, as your brothers must have sat in their billets and remembered this view here.’

It was not something she could argue about. ‘They wrote about it too,’ Catherine agreed after a while. ‘I used to send them photographs and news of what was happening here.’

‘My parents did that as well. Did I tell you, they both died while I was away?’ He flung the cigarette down on to the road, and watched the wind blow the last breath out of it on the gravel.

‘I’m sorry.’ It was the first time she had thought about anyone else all day, apart from her own misery and Sean's imprisonment. The death of Andrew Butler's unknown parents seemed trivial in comparison to that; but she remembered the loss and loneliness she had felt at her three funerals: first her two brothers, then her mother, Maeve. No doubt he had felt like that. ‘Do you have any other family?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘So we’re matched, you and I. Sole inheritors of great estates. Even if mine’s just a pile of ashes in a park. Come on, you look cold.’

He strode back to the car and started the engine. She followed, slowly. This is not going to be a stay in Killrath on my own, she thought. This man is going to invade every part of it.

He appeared to be well in with the Fergusons, too. The son, David, met them at the house with a broad smile on his face and an assurance that dinner would be ready in an hour and Miss Catherine's room aired as Major Butler had ordered, and Catherine had the odd sense that David paid more attention to Andrew than to her. This was more marked when the father appeared ten minutes later. Ever since she had realized she might inherit Killrath, Catherine had known that dealing with her father's agent, Arthur Ferguson, would be her hardest trial. He had not forgotten her defiance over the evictions, nor did he appear to have changed his opinion that women had no understanding of the business of estate management. He greeted her with crusty politeness, as usual, but with Andrew he was almost cheerful. Catherine watched in pensive silence while the two men discussed the arrangements for winter feed. Andrew's manner was easy, relaxed, controlled. It reminded her of something or someone that she couldn't quite place. Whatever it was, the elusive memory made her distrust him deeply.