The Runaway (36 page)

‘Aren’t you knowing, Polly,’ Dana said admiringly. ‘I knew children were being evacuated to what the government called “places of safety”, but I don’t think I’d realised the numbers involved.’ A sudden thought struck her. ‘Will any of ’em be going to Ireland, do you suppose? If so, there may be no room for me aboard the Irish ferry!’

‘Ha ha,’ Polly said sarcastically. ‘That would be a grand get-out, wouldn’t it? Well, you’re out of luck, Dana McBride, because the kids aren’t likely to go to a foreign country, are they? No, they’ll be off to North Wales, or the Wirral, or maybe somewhere even further off. But not, I repeat,
not
, to Eire!’

‘All right, all right, no need to gloat so obviously,’ Dana said, but she gave Polly her sweetest smile as she spoke. ‘I’ve said I’ll go back to Castletara so back to Castletara I will go. And you can keep your silly old secret, Polly Smith.’

‘I intend to do so,’ Polly said composedly. ‘There’s the ticket queue, Dana, so you’d better get in it. And don’t forget if you mean to stay with your people just drop me a line, otherwise I’ll worry myself silly, imagining you being torpedoed or shot or bombed or something.’

‘You’re daft,’ Dana said, but she said it affectionately, and when she had purchased her ticket she and Polly hugged and Dana saw her friend’s round blue eyes fill with tears. Polly began to say something to the effect that she had never loved anyone like she loved Dana but Dana had no wish to end up crying herself and gave Polly a shove. ‘Shut up. This isn’t goodbye, it’s au revoir, and it’s only that for a few days, because I mean to come back just as soon as I’ve sorted things out with Mammy and Johnny,’ she said. ‘Be good while I’m gone, Polly!’

Just as she was about to ascend the gangway, someone tugged her elbow. A fat and jolly Irish woman gestured behind her to the crowd on the quay. ‘Your pal’s shoutin’ you,’ she said reprovingly. ‘Give her a wave.’ Dana obediently turned and waved in Polly’s direction, picking out her friend’s little blonde head, though not without difficulty. Polly was shouting something, but though the words were drowned in the general hubbub Dana suddenly realised what her friend was saying.

‘Give my love to Con,’ Polly was shouting. ‘He’s the reason you wouldn’t go home!’

Dana hastily turned back towards the ferry and continued to climb the gangway. Trust Polly to know her so well, she thought ruefully. It was true that the quarrel with Con had been as strong a reason for her leaving home as her mother’s marriage to Johnny Devlin. Con had scorned her attempts to get him to agree that the marriage must be stopped. When the argument got really vicious both parties had said things they had never meant. Con had told her to get out of his life, because she had told him to get out of Castletara. Now, three years older and a great deal more sensible, she acknowledged
that she had been wrong all along the line. Marriage is between the two people involved and nobody else. Both Johnny and Feena had a right to happiness, which was one of the many things Con had tried to tell her. But I was impetuous, self-willed and pretty damned stupid, she thought now. If only I’d written to Con at the start, admitting I was wrong and asking him to forget the horrible things I’d said. Oh, I did write, but it was a stiff and starchy letter because I was still clinging to my belief that, had he known, Donovan McBride would have forbidden the banns. And Con had never replied though she had given him – and only him – the name of the restaurant in which she worked. At the time she had expected him both to reply and to pass the address of the Willows restaurant on to her mother, but this had not happened; or at any rate, if he had done so, Feena had simply chucked the address into the fire, or so Dana had told herself at the time. Now, however, she was sure she had misjudged both Con and her mother. Letters do go astray, she told herself, leaning on the rail and watching the bustling departure on the quayside below. Yes, post gets lost all the time, so why didn’t I try to contact my family again? But she knew the real reason, of course. Pride. After that one attempt to get in touch she had been too hurt to think straight and had decided only to return to Castletara as a successful business person. At one time she had thought she might marry Ralph simply in order to show Con that someone wanted her even if he did not, but she had soon realised that such a move would be madness. She and Ralph were pals but could never be lovers since neither felt strongly enough about the other, so now here she was on the ferry
back to Ireland and for the first time she would be completely honest with herself. She loved her mother and she liked Johnny and hoped that their marriage was a success, but the way she felt about Con was quite different. She adored him still as she had done ever since they had played together as children. She could never contemplate marriage with anyone else, and if when she returned to Castletara he asked her to marry him she would immediately accept. The fact that by now he might have married someone else she considered totally unthinkable. Love such as theirs was not transferable; he would wait a lifetime for her as she would for him.

Dana dreamed happily as the ferry began to breast the waves of the Irish Sea.

Chapter Twelve

DANA SPENT THE
voyage watching the other passengers and trying to guess their reasons for quitting England and returning to Eire. Almost without exception they spoke with a degree of brogue and almost without exception their main subject of conversation was the war. Some, including the elderly Irish woman who had drawn her attention to Polly’s shouts, were returning because they had no wish to be embroiled in a war not of their making. They had no time for Hitler, were disgusted by the behaviour of the German people, but wanted no part in the bloodshed they could plainly see was to come. It was less than twenty years since Eire had gained her own independence from Britain, and at what cost? But they would miss the money they had earned from the British. Who knew, if their search for work was not successful they might return, professing themselves eager to help in any way possible.

By the time the ship docked Dana felt that the majority of the people on board were like herself: testing the water. If England was invaded and crushed beneath the Nazi jackboot they would tighten their belts, keep themselves to themselves and wait for better times. If on the other hand the British took a more warlike stance and fought
back then most of the Irish – or those aboard the ferry, at any rate – would return to help in the fight.

At first Dana thought this was too like running with the hare and hunting with the hounds, but she very soon realised her mistake. In no circumstances would the ordinary people throw in their lot with the huns – Irish memories are long and they had suffered alongside the English, many Europeans and eventually even the Yanks in the terrible trenches of the previous war. Germany had been the enemy last time, and would be so again.

But the murmuring to which Dana had only given half her attention was becoming louder as the misty outline of Ireland drew nearer, and presently she could make out trees and soon even leaves, russet, gold and palest fawn, ready to fall when the autumn winds blew but hanging grimly on now as the September sun gilded them into fiery beauty.

The voyage across the Irish Sea had been a long one, almost eight hours, and when she had arrived in Dublin Dana had been too tired to even consider travelling on that day. Instead she had found a cheap lodging on a small side street where the landlady had supplied a plain but delicious supper and a breakfast of soda bread and bacon, filling Dana’s water bottle and giving her half a loaf of brack which, she said, would last for days so it would, especially if eaten with good farm-made butter. Dana had thanked her profusely and answered her many questions about Great Britain now they were at war, all of which seemed to imply that she believed Dana to be in personal contact with the prime minister.

So it was after a good breakfast that Dana set off once
more, heading for the railway station and the train which would take her some of the way. After that she would board a local bus and with luck would arrive at her destination halfway through the afternoon. By the time she arrived in Castletara village, she was weary, hungry and thirsty, though she had purchased both food and drink when the train stopped at small stations along the way. Now, looking around her, she was suddenly filled with a wild exhilaration. Though it was raining the air was fresh and sweet with the scent of leaves, salt water and trodden grass, and she was achingly aware for the first time since she had left it how she missed her home and its people. Here, even the accents were different from those of the Dubliners who were the most frequent Irish visitors to Liverpool. Softer and gentler, they reminded Dana of the sweet summer rain which falls so frequently and is so often cursed by the inhabitants of the Emerald Isle. But today Dana lifted her face to it, for it was like a mother’s loving caress and as such she welcomed it, for even though she had a further five miles to walk she knew she was home at last. She began to walk, with a piece of poetry running through her head:
Home is the sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter home from the hill
. Well, she might not be a sailor, though she had spent some time on a ship lately, and she might not be a hunter though now she was hunting for forgiveness and a place in her old home. She could not remember the rest of the poem – if it was a poem – but it sang to itself in her head and she welcomed it as she had welcomed the soft Irish rain whose touch was so gentle that it could scarcely be felt, though it had already penetrated to her skin.

She reached the lane; only another mile to go and she would be able to see the towers of Castletara to her right across gently rolling meadows dotted with horses. She had already seen sheep, their woolly coats shorn, and on a downward-sloping meadow, at the foot of which ran the river in which she had learned to swim, cattle grazed and wandered down to paddle in the clear water, making Dana remember how the passage of the hunt had caused the sand to rise in clouds, stealing the river’s clarity, though it could not steal its chuckling, bubbling song.

She reached the point at which a glance to her right should have revealed Castletara and for a moment she stood, hand flying to her mouth, shocked and horrified; there was no castle! No great high stone wall, no towers, no long gravelled drive thickly edged with evergreens. But before a great wail could break from her lips she realised that memory had played her false. Heart thumping with recent terror she walked on, probably less than a hundred yards, and then stopped by a gap in the ragged hedge, almost afraid at first to turn her head. Was it here? Had she made some terrible mistake, and was she perhaps walking along the wrong lane? But then she forced herself to look to the right again and her tumultuous heart ceased its frantic beating and became regular once more. It was there! Castletara reared before her, the wall with its tiny growths of hart’s tongue fern, house leek and fat cushions of moss as solid as the day she had left, though from here she could not have identified the tiny plants which grew in the crevices between the great stones. She could see the gravel drive, still partly obscured by the straggly rhododendrons which her father had always intended to root up since he said they made
the approach to the house too dark and depressing. She could see the towers, one of which was – had been – her bedroom. She could see her parents’ bedroom windows on the floor below her own and for a moment her heart sank at the thought that the room would doubtless now belong to Feena and Johnny. Then she chided herself; life went on whether you liked it or not so she must accept the inevitable, make the best of it.

She lifted her chin and licked the delicate raindrops from her lips, resettled her haversack on her shoulders and set off towards the tall wrought iron gates which led to her home. She reached them, glancing sideways as she did so at the lodge keeper’s cottage, half expecting to be challenged, for Mrs O’Leary and her husband had lived in the lodge in her time and surely lived there still; three years was, after all, not a long time in the life of an Irish estate. That glance at the lodge, however, showed her that one thing had definitely changed. The windows shone as brightly as mirrors, the curtains were fresh and clean and someone had painted the front door and polished the knocker, an object the young Dana had always envied the O’Learys. It was in the form of a lion’s head and though the O’Learys, a rather slatternly couple, had always left their door open except when the weather was extremely bad, Dana had always announced her arrival with a gentle knock with the brass head. Even in those days the heedless child that had been Dana had thought vaguely that it was a shame to see the knocker gradually greening, and would surreptitiously rub at the brass with her sleeve. New brooms sweep clean, Dana thought rather sadly now as she bypassed the lodge. Either the O’Learys had changed out of all recognition
or someone else lived in their old home. She was tempted to linger, perhaps even to knock, for that would delay her arrival at Castletara, but then she shook her head at her own foolishness and hurried on. With every step she was getting nearer the moment she most longed for and most dreaded; the moment of truth, she supposed. She had heard the expression many times on lips other than her own, but had never truly understood it. Now she did.

The gravelled drive led to a sweep so that carriages – only cars were more likely in this day and age – could approach the front door. Dana skirted the house and headed for the stable yard. She walked under the arch, and was immediately transported back in time. The yard, the stables – all the outbuildings, in fact – were miraculously unchanged, though they had been joined by a new wing, she saw. But other than that it was as though she had truly stepped back in time and was once more the Dana of long ago. She stood still for a moment, savouring the feeling. Her past was here, every moment of it; she could almost believe that Donovan McBride had never died, that Feena and Johnny Devlin had never loved, even that the O’Learys still lived in the lodge, trundling up to the castle whenever they were needed, Mrs O’Leary to scrub floors, wash paintwork and generally help round the house, though she never bothered about such things in her own domain, and Mr O’Leary to mow the lawns or dig and harvest in the kitchen garden.