Tyringham Park (21 page)

“Must be off,” said Cormac, almost running from the room. His mind was teeming with ideas and his hand itching to pick up his favourite hogshair brush that he could already feel
loaded with paint. He had eight hours’ work ahead of him. Setanta’s battle frenzy couldn’t be any more powerful than his fever to transfer the images now in his mind to the
canvas.

The next morning Charlotte became agitated when Cúchulainn, against the advice of his camp, took on the warrior Queen Maeve and her magic spells and ignored the omens and prophecies that
were warning him not to fight. When the faithful horse, the Grey of Macha, began to weep dark tears of blood in sorrow at his master’s impending death, Charlotte’s lip and chin began to
quiver.

Cormac stopped abruptly, abandoning his storyteller’s stance. “Are you all right, Charlotte?” he asked, sitting beside her bed.

Charlotte pulled the sheet over her head and broke into loud sobs, banging her heels on the mattress and kicking the brass bed-end.

Cormac leant over to comfort her.

Aunt Verity was on the spot within seconds. She didn’t ask what had happened – she must have been listening at the door again. Pushing Cormac aside, she forcibly pulled the sheet
away from Charlotte’s face. Charlotte wailed more loudly and snatched back the sheet to cover her head.

Cormac had a strong urge to lift Verity up, push her out the door and turn the lock on her but, controlling himself, rang for Queenie and asked her to fetch Holly. “And you look after
Harcourt until Holly returns,” he said quietly.

Queenie, taking in the thrashing figure in the bed and the intensifying howls, ignored the house regulation of sedate movement at all times and ran to the nursery as fast as she could.

“Control yourself,” said Verity, slapping Charlotte’s arms in an effort to wrest the sheet from her. Charlotte held on and Verity slapped her harder. “Let go, you wicked
girl! Let go, I tell you!”

Holly arrived breathless.

“Holly will take over now, Miss Blackshaw,” said Cormac, taking hold of Verity’s slapping arm with his good hand.

“Take your hand off me, you uncouth lackey! I’m her aunt,” Verity protested, pulling away. “You are only a servant, in case you’d forgotten.”

“Lord Waldron’s orders I’m afraid, Miss Blackshaw. You will have to take it up with him,” he said, knowing she wouldn’t. He guided her towards the door.
“Thank you for your concern. We’ll call you if we need you but I’m sure Holly can manage. Good afternoon, Miss Blackshaw.”

Verity, scarlet with temper, said loudly as she left, “You’ll never rid her of her wilful habits the way you keep pandering to her. Spare the rod and spoil the child –
that’s what the Bible says and never were words more truly spoken. You haven’t heard the last of this.”

When he turned back Charlotte was still sobbing loudly but had relinquished the sheet and was in Holly’s arms. Holly signalled to Cormac over Charlotte’s head that she would stay and
Cormac was free to go.

Cormac visited Holly that evening after the two children were in bed. He had been too distracted all afternoon to paint, thinking of Charlotte’s distress and wondering what he had said to
cause it. Holly was able to fill him in on Charlotte’s past attachment to Mandrake and the awful events surrounding his death.

“No more sad stories about horses then. Thank you for your intervention. All I could think of doing was strangling Aunt Verity. Lucky I have only one hand.” He moved off, chuckling
to himself.

“Where is she?” Cormac asked the next morning, finding no sign of Charlotte in the bedroom.

“All dressed and ready and waiting for you in the schoolroom. Up like a lark this morning.” Queenie was smiling broadly.

Cormac bounded up the stairs.

Charlotte was sitting at her desk, trying to look nonchalant. Cormac entered the room as if her presence there were natural and expected. No more gloomy stories, he resolved. Where to begin?

“Did Snow White eat the apple?” Charlotte asked shyly. This was the first time she had spoken in the eight days of their time together.

“She did,” Cormac answered. He finished the story, grateful for the happy ending. “And I know where the house of the seven dwarfs is, the very one, so when you feel better
we’ll go along to see it.”

“I’d like to see it,” she smiled, while her eyebrows said, ‘Who’s he trying to fool?’

They started to make reading charts. “I’ll do the letters and you do the pictures,” Cormac suggested, looking forward to seeing Charlotte’s drawing skills for himself. He
took paper, pens, scissors and glue out of the presses.

“What a grand little illustrator you are!” he said with pleasure, after Charlotte had drawn an apple, bat, cat, dog, elephant, fish and giraffe. When ‘h’ came up
Charlotte said ‘horse’. Cormac said that might be a bit difficult and would she rather draw a hat, but she said she could manage.

While she was adding the bridle to the accurate outline of a horse, she looked up and asked, “What happened to the Grey that cried the tears of blood?”

Cormac hesitated. “Do you really want to know?”

She nodded.

He was tempted to change the ending, but having already mentioned the omens and prophecies, he knew Charlotte wouldn’t accept a false resolution.

Charlotte continued to nod.

By the end of the story they were both moved – Charlotte by the actions of the brave Grey of Macha who was mortally wounded trying to defend his master, and Cormac by the dramatic image of
the raven sitting on the shoulder of the wounded hero who had strapped himself to a pillar so he could die upright facing his enemies.

“What happened to your hand?” she asked later. “Did it get hurt in battle?”

His index, middle and ring fingers were missing as far as his knuckles, his thumb and little finger as far as his wrist. The rest of his hand and forearm were corrugated with deep scars.

“You could say that.” Cormac gave her a sanitised version of the incident that had caused his injuries and she wanted to hear more about the war. The more he told her the more she
wanted to know. As with Cúchulainn’s story, she was more interested in the animals than the soldiers. He was careful not to include the sufferings of the horses in battle, especially
one he couldn’t forget who thrashed and roared for what seemed like an age before anyone could get near enough to finish it off.

Those who say family life is a crashing bore (most of his regiment) must be going about it the wrong way, Waldron commented to Verity who was following him around to ask him
something. After he sorted out each person under his authority, he wrote a short list of directives to leave with his will. If anything happened to him on this trip he wanted it to be known
publicly that he took his familial responsibilities as seriously as his military duties.

Waldron read over what he had written, felt satisfied with it, and signed it. Not for the first time he felt gratitude to his forebears who had made a fortune from the slave
trade to the West Indies and had the wisdom to invest it in London property, the proceeds of which enabled him to live the life of a king in India. Tyringham Park could not on its own support such
extravagance along with the upkeep of the separate households in Dublin and Cork.

“What do you want, Verity?” he asked, his usual tone of exasperation giving way to amusement, knowing he had curtailed her authority and he would soon be leaving to take his rightful
place near the top of the Empire’s hierarchy. The way she fussed, one would think she was approaching old age, not her prime, if religious women could be said to have a prime, so
circumscribed were their lives.

“It’s about the tutor.” Standing beside his desk, she appeared intimidated, but driven to do her duty nonetheless. He didn’t ask her to sit for fear she would settle in
for a long conversation. “Have you known him long?”

“Long enough. Why do you ask?”

“He seems a bit . . .” she faltered, wanting to say ‘deranged’ but unwilling to admit peeping into the classroom and witnessing Cormac’s antics, “a bit
common
. He could fill Charlotte’s mind with all sorts of unacceptable ideas and we would be none the wiser.” She didn’t mention Cormac’s manhandling her arm for fear
Waldron would make light of the incident rather than give it the serious consideration it merited.

“‘Common’ is one thing that he is not, dear sister-in-law, and ‘none the wiser’ is what Charlotte will always be if she doesn’t receive some tuition soon. Ten
years of age and still illiterate. Need I say more, dear cousin? She is obviously in the right hands – hand – and I expressly forbid you to interfere. Do I make myself clear?”

A flash of hatred flicked across Verity’s face before she had time to mask it but Waldron didn’t notice. He was rereading his directions and was struck by how his generosity showed
through and how smart he was to put it all down in writing.

“Do I?” he repeated.

“Yes, Waldron,” said Verity, turning to leave.

“I didn’t attain the position of Major General in the army without becoming a good judge of character along the way,” he proclaimed to her retreating back.

Waldron travelled to Tyringham Park for a weekend with his brother Charles and his wife Harriet, their four children with their spouses and three grandchildren. Two things
struck him. The Park was as full of energy and gaiety as it had been in his father’s time, and Manus, rather than being demoted by Charles as he expected, was still head man at the stables
and was held in the highest regard.

So, after a four-and-a-half year absence, Waldron set off back to India with a clear conscience.

Verity, on the other hand, full of disquiet about the new tutor, determined to keep a close eye on him, as well as putting her worries in the hands of the Lord. It was confusing at times,
Waldron and Jesus sharing the same title.

To break the monotony of the classroom routine and to rid Charlotte of her superfluous bulk without drawing attention to it, Cormac planned excursions to take them all over the
city. While they walked, he continued to tell stories, recite poems and speak in French. They visited the house in Stephen’s Green where the seven dwarfs used to live; Kilmainham where
Rapunzel had been imprisoned; Herbert Park, which had been cleared of briars since Sleeping Beauty’s time; the bridge over the Dodder where the troll lurked before the large Billy Goat Gruff
dealt with him; the port where Ali Baba docked, and the Iveagh Gardens where the Selfish Giant once presided.

Each day Aunt Verity waited at an upstairs window for their return, noting how the two of them walked close together, with Charlotte looking up at her tutor with admiration and Mr Delaney
reflecting the same regard back to her. The sight of such friendliness between teacher and pupil made her feel quite unwell.

By the time Cormac had depleted his horde of fairy stories and was ready to move on to more mature tales, Charlotte, becoming slimmer by the day, was always the first one ready in the morning
and could walk for miles without effort.

Even after she graduated to reading for herself, she would continue to ask Cormac to tell her again about wicked stepmothers, spells and curses, and how the spells were broken and the curses
thwarted.

“Can I do that?”

Cormac was unaware Charlotte had spoken. He had propped up a work in progress to examine and analyse while she was reading
Little Women
aloud. In less than a year her reading had become
so fluent (though she still trailed her finger across the page to keep her place) she didn’t need prompting. Cormac’s mind wandered from the story, which was just as well as he
didn’t want to spoil Charlotte’s enjoyment by snorting or making cynical comments.

He couldn’t help himself. In the middle of a sentence he ran next door to his studio and returned with a brush laden with paint, which he placed on the highlighted left shoulder of the
seated blue female nude. He walked backwards while not taking his eyes off the shoulder, then ran forwards, manipulated the fresh paint, ran backwards and stood staring at it for a long period.
This he repeated until he was satisfied with the effect.

Charlotte had stopped reading and was watching him.

“Can I do that?” she repeated.

At that moment, both she and Cormac became aware of Aunt Verity’s presence in the room.

“Sorry, wrong door,” said Aunt Verity, staring at the blue nude.

Charlotte’s legs had red squares on them and her face was flushed from sitting too close to the coal fire. The door, often left open, had been closed to keep in the heat. Outside it was a
typical January day – cold, dark and raining.