Another Kind of Life (20 page)

There was the distinctive sound of wheels on gravel. Keeping carefully to one side, Hannah looked out the window opposite the music room, knowing already what she would see. The door opened and
Papa descended from the brougham, holding his hand out to Mama, who followed. It couldn’t be helped, she’d have to go.

Hannah ran along the corridor again, down the back stairs, around the corner and into the dormitory once more. She sat on her bed, as though she’d been waiting there all the time. Sister
Louisa, a sweet old nun who no longer taught due to her failing sight, appeared at the doorway a couple of minutes later.

‘Hannah O’Connor? Sister Claire is waiting for you.’

‘Thank you, Sister Louisa.’

The elderly nun gestured towards Hannah’s trunk.

‘Don’t worry, dear. We’ll get Mr Peters to bring it to the carriage for you.’ She hesitated for a moment, then placed her hand gently on Hannah’s arm. She peered up
at her, her weak blue eyes magnified hugely by the thick lenses of her glasses. ‘Such a shame, my dear,’ she whispered. ‘You have always been a delightful pupil, a real asset to
the school.’

Hannah smiled at her.

‘I’m not leaving, Sister Louisa, at least, not for good. I’m just going home for a day or so. My parents – I, that is we – have some things to discuss. But
I’ll be back again. Can you tell Miss de Vere for me in case I don’t see her before I go?’

The old nun looked confused. She patted Hannah’s hand distractedly, said, ‘Yes, yes, my dear, of course,’ and then led the way to the front parlour, where all guests were
received.

Hannah knocked on the door. She entered immediately. There was no sign of Sister Claire. Mama was seated by the old fireplace, Papa was standing, his back to her, looking out the large window
into the gardens.

She kissed both of them.

‘Mama, Papa, I’d like it very much if we could try to see Miss de Vere . . .’

Before she’d even finished speaking, her mother stood up.

‘That won’t be possible, Hannah. There are some matters your father and I need to discuss with you, at home. We are leaving at once.’

Hannah looked from one to the other. Tension was etched deeply into the lines at the sides of her mother’s mouth. Her face was closed, empty of all expression. Her eyes were looking down
at her hands as she pulled on her gloves. Her father’s face looked deeply shadowed; he wouldn’t leave his moustaches alone.

Hannah decided to stay silent. The convent parlour was not the place, this was obviously not the time. She followed her mother out the door. When she got outside, her trunk had already been
safely stowed in the brougham.

They made their way quickly around St Stephen’s Green. The rapid blurring of the railings as they passed made Hannah feel slightly dizzy. Her stomach began to feel
restless, edging towards nausea. But she would not look away. She had decided to gaze intently out the window to keep her eyes directed away from her parents. Any glance, any movement might break
the deepening silence, and Hannah was determined not to speak now until she was home. She turned slightly away from them, seeming to find much to interest her in the carriages lined up outside
Harcourt Street Station, and the purposeful air of passengers on their way to and from the trains. It started to rain as they made their way down the Rathmines Road, one of those always unexpected
April cloudbursts. Hannah watched as the Town Hall receded into the distance, its facade darkening as the rain soaked everything on the street within minutes. Some young men dashed for shelter
under the trees, women struggled with their umbrellas. It was all so ordinary. Other people’s lives just carried on as normal. Hannah held on to the window frame as the brougham turned
sharply up the Rathgar Road. Just one more turn into Highfield Road, and then they would be home.

Hannah was conscious of her heartbeat beginning to quicken. She glanced anxiously in her parents’ direction, but nothing had changed. She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself for the
last few moments of the journey. She decided to close her eyes then and play to herself the final notes of Chopin’s Nocturne, Opus 15, No. 1. Hannah could see the sheet music before her, her
fingers resting on the gleaming keys of the piano; could hear the dying notes, as clear and resonant as the day she had performed for Miss de Vere. She remembered the sudden elation she had felt,
the strong sense that something wonderful had just happened. Her fingertips thrilled with the memory of their own success. She had done well that afternoon, and she knew it.

Everything that day had struck her as beautiful. Waiting by the window for Miss de Vere, she had looked out on to the convent grounds below suffused with the russet glow of an autumn afternoon;
the silence of the music room had been intensified by the light flooding on to the polished floorboards; even Sister Louisa’s star-gazer lilies, arranged in the glass vase on the piano,
seemed more highly perfumed than usual, filling the air all around her. All of her senses had felt heightened, receptive. It was as though she were living the day with the volume turned up.
Forte
; the thought had pleased her.

And now this.

Whatever her parents had in mind, whatever the source of their anger, Hannah knew that, in some way not yet defined, their plans did not include their eldest daughter becoming a teacher.
Chopin’s melodies faded into nothingness as the wheels of the brougham came to an abrupt, gravelly stop outside the door to her home.

Hannah could feel Eleanor’s eyes on her as she ascended the steps to the front door. She had spotted her at once, the small anxious face peeping out from behind the
drapes in the drawing room. Hannah had no time to speak to her, they simply exchanged a glance, sharing the intimate sisterly knowledge that something was wrong. Her mother sent Eleanor away at
once.

‘What is it?’ said Hannah, once the door had closed behind her sister.

‘We’ve had a letter from a Miss de Vere, about your going on to study music in the autumn.’

Hannah wondered why she said ‘
a
Miss de Vere’ like that, as though she’d never met her. Mama well knew who
the
Miss de Vere was; why was she making it sound as
though she were some anonymous person, one of thousands of Misses de Vere?

‘Yes,’ said Hannah, ‘but only if I get the scholarship. She thinks I have a very good chance. I’m well prepared and . . .’

At this, Hannah’s father raised his hand. She stopped.

‘It’s not possible,’ he said, simply.

‘But Papa, I really want this. I know I could be good enough, and the scholarship would pay all my fees. I can teach . . .’

‘This is not just about money, Hannah.’

Her mother’s voice was sharp. Hannah realized she had touched, too soon, on the most painful topic of all.

‘Nor is life just about doing what you want. It is about doing your duty.’

Hannah stayed silent. She thought that this was probably the first time that she had really hated her mother and all that she stood for. She could feel unaccustomed anger begin to burn somewhere
deep in her stomach.

‘Papa?’

‘We have made other arrangements for you, Hannah. You are a young woman now, ready for adult responsibility.’

He stopped.

‘May I know what my responsibility is to be?’

Hannah spoke quietly. She had begun to shake inside. She knew what was coming. She was proud of herself that she gave nothing away, no hint of dismay, no quiver of anger: her voice was cold,
steady. She had the satisfaction of seeing her mother fidget with the gloves in her lap, her father’s chin grow weak and uncertain. She waited.

‘We feel it best that you marry, early next year. We feel it is in everybody’s interest that you do so.’

Her father was not looking at her.

‘May I ask how so?’

‘No, you may not.’ Her mother was clearly losing patience. ‘You will be married as we think best. It is our duty to secure your future for you. Marriage will do that, and we
are happy that we have chosen well.’

Hannah looked levelly at her mother. She would not lower her gaze. She would never have been able to utter the words, but her eyes were clear and challenging. A secure future through marriage?
they asked silently. Just like yours?

Sophia flushed angrily and turned away.

‘May I know to whom?’

Hannah wanted only to remain composed now. She would not let them break her.

‘Charles MacBride,’ her father replied. ‘You already know Mrs MacBride, Constance, . . . from . . . before. They are an old, respectable Belfast family.’

Hannah wondered if he was finished yet. She said nothing.

‘He’s a good man, a very good man,’ he added, almost appealingly.

He wanted her to absolve him, she realized. He wanted her to make him feel better for selling off his eldest daughter. For money was at the bottom of it; of that she had no doubt.
‘Respectable’ families, ‘good’ families, ‘well-regarded’ families – she had become used to the words her parents used, down through the years, had learned
to read the secret vocabulary they shared, the real significance that lay concealed just below the surface of their speech. All these words meant the same thing: rich families, moneyed people. Old
money, new money, fortunes made in trade – her parents had a complex system of gradation for everyone they knew. Everything depended on the extent of one’s wealth; once that was
established, only then did the manner of its acquisition become important. Old fortunes, inherited from generation to generation, were better than new, unexpected wealth from the stock exchange;
stocks and bonds were, in turn, significantly better than money amassed through trade, however old and respectable the business. Finally, old money from trade was unquestionably better than new.
‘Nouveau riche’ was the supreme insult, implying, as it did, the resources to live like a gentleman without the pedigree and the savoir faire to do so. Life well lived was a right, a
duty
, conferred by long years of privilege. Hannah felt keenly the supreme irony of her parents’ snobbery. They had nothing, it seemed to her. Even this
house
belonged to
Grandfather Delaney – they lived on his charity, leaving Leinster Road quickly, discreetly, on Papa’s return from prison. Once the epitome of solid, unflashy respectability, her father,
the government man, was now nothing more than the career civil servant turned thief.

All the old contempt for him that she had tried to suppress for five long years welled to the surface now. She didn’t care any longer. They could punish her in any way they chose. Nothing
could be worse than this.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘You want me to be married. To a respectable man.’

The emphasis on ‘respectable’ was just enough to make her father flinch. He looked at her, without replying.

She kept her voice steady, smoothed the front of her dress. She needed to do something to stop the shaking of her hands.

‘I hope,’ she said softly, ‘that you got a good price.’

She turned on her heel and made her way, steadily, towards the drawing-room door.

‘How dare you!’

Sophia’s voice exploded into the stunned silence.

‘Let her go, woman!’

Her father’s anger followed Hannah out of the drawing room. She stepped outside into the hallway, and closed the door very gently behind her, waiting until she heard the click.

Eleanor was sitting on the stairs, waiting for her. Hannah made her way past, holding her breath. She could not stop, not now. She placed her hand on top of her sister’s smooth hair, and
continued to make her way up to her room.

She closed and locked the door. She felt as though her body had become suddenly brittle, about to shatter. It seemed to be made up of millions of tiny pieces, like the cracked glaze she had seen
on vases in the museum. She climbed on to the bed, lay on her back, and covered her face with her arms. She hadn’t even the will to cry. She stayed there, all night, ignoring the calls at her
door.

Eventually, they left her alone. She listened as the last set of footsteps made its way downstairs. She could stay here for ever, she thought. She wrapped herself in the counterpane, still in
her day-dress, and slept.

The night had been a restless one. A long thin thread of oblivion, it had been disturbed every so often by dreams which struggled to the surface, breaking into the air like
shrill, discordant notes. She had been back in the music room at school again, but a room which had lost all the warmth of its recent familiarity. Everything was arranged differently, with its own
peculiar dream logic. The metronome swayed silently, and Miss de Vere looked on disapprovingly as Hannah’s fingers refused to touch the black keys, no matter how hard she tried.

She could feel her underarms grow damp. She tried to tell her teacher that everything had been so right, earlier. She had practised her Chopin endlessly, joyfully, for days. Her hands had
skimmed delicately over the notes, loving the dip and dive of tone and rhythm, the quick swoops of bright melody and dark brooding that had flowed effortlessly from her, hour after hour.

And now it was all slipping away from her. It was as though all her skill, all her inspiration had deserted her. Her fingers felt thickened by stupidity. Even her eyes were paralysed, powerless
to stop the slow confusion, the blur of notes across her vision. For a sudden moment of brittle revelation, the minims and quavers, crotchets and semi-quavers seemed to be nothing more than
meaningless black marks, like tiny footprints scattered across the sheet in front of her, marching away from her. It was as though she had never seen them before, as though she had suddenly lost
the power to understand their language, once as familiar to her as speech.

She crashed both hands on to the piano, sending a wave of silence washing around the emptiness of her bedroom.

Her eyes jerked open. Her palms were sweaty, her hair in disarray. Hannah covered her face with her hands, remembering yesterday, remembering what had happened. She lay very still, re-imagining
the music room which up until yesterday had been filled with optimism and purpose. Now, it felt flat and stale, all its tranquillity shattered. She could still recapture the smell of wax, the
sterile cleanliness of the gleaming wood, the watery midday light filtering through the crowding oak trees just beyond the windows.