Bridie's Fire (15 page)

‘Isn't it lovely?' said Mrs Arbuckle. ‘Sir William, he's had it built specially for Miss Charity for her wedding present and part of her dowry.'

Miss Charity looked flushed as she showed them the kitchen and the little room behind it that they would share for the next few days. Bridie and Dora immediately set to work, unloading the shopping, peeling vegetables and kneading pastry for the evening meal, while Charity sat down with Mrs Arbuckle and discussed what food was to be prepared for the week.

As Bridie worked a lump of pastry into shape, her knife slipped and the blade nicked her finger. Red blood splattered across the smooth white dough.

Dora looked up and saw the ruined pastry. ‘You clumsy idiot!' she shouted, snatching the knife away from Bridie.

Bridie stood absolutely still, holding her hand, watching the blood run down her fingers and drip onto the floured board. She stared blankly at the spreading bloodstain but her mind was full of much darker visions. She saw Honor Gauran floating in the murky river, her body swollen with child and with grief. She saw Biddy Ryan and Caitlin Moriarty each choosing to lie with strange men. She thought of her mother lying in the ditch on the other side of Dingle, and all the events that had brought her across the ocean to this doll's house by the sea. There was no sense in any of it. What had any of them done to deserve their fates? The injustice of it all made her want to shout with rage.

‘Are you listening to me, you stupid Irish dolt!' yelled Dora.

‘The Devil blister your hide for you,' said Bridie in a low, angry voice, like the growl of a cornered dog.

‘Don't you talk to me about the Devil, you Papist slattern. Mrs Arbuckle offered to show you the light and you're so stubborn, you don't know what's good for you. Your whole family are burning in the hellfires and that's where you're bound yourself, because not even God himself cares what happens to you!' Dora turned her back and resumed her task.

Blind rage and grief whirled inside Bridie. The next moment, she leapt on Dora's back, tore off her white cap and pulled a hank of mousey hair out by the roots. Dora screamed and turned on Bridie, slapping her hard across the face. A cloud of flour rose above them as Bridie fought back, scratching and biting like a creature possessed, but Dora was too strong for her. She dragged Bridie across the kitchen and threw her against the wall, then bashed her head against the chimney stone.

‘Dora! Bridie! What's possessed the pair of you!' shouted Mrs Arbuckle, forcing them apart. Blood was streaming down Bridie's lip and her head ached, but she noticed with some satisfaction that Dora already had one eye starting to swell and a trickle of blood seeped out from her hairline.

That night Bridie lay in bed listening to Mrs Arbuckle snoring and the heavy breathing of Dora. She'd endured a long lecture from Mrs Arbuckle while Dora sat opposite her, weeping so loudly that Bridie almost felt sorry for her. Bridie heard little of what the old cook said to her. Her mind wouldn't stop whirling, full of voices and images, of Honor Gauran floating face down in the Yarra River, of Biddy Ryan in the market square; but mostly, it was the angry words with Caitlin that echoed in her head, and she ached with a sickening sense of betrayal. Was this how she had betrayed Brandon – leaving him to find a better life while he had nothing ahead of him but years of enduring the drudgery of the workhouse? All these months, Bridie had tried to keep her mind fixed on the future, on what lay ahead when she and Brandon and Caitlin would be together under the same roof. And now the dream had come crashing down, as if the lintel had been pulled clean out of her dreamhouse. She thought of the little cottage that had once been her family home, high on the hill above Dunquin, looking out over the sea. Suddenly, Bridie had a deep craving for the ocean, a hunger just to touch salt water and know that on the other side of the world it washed against the rocks of Slea Head.

Leaving her shoes beneath her bed, she tiptoed out of the kitchen in bare feet and ran across the front garden in the dark. A few lights still shone from the windows of the second floor but Bridie kept to the shadows of the trees. It didn't take her long to find a path through the scrub and down onto the beach.

The water lapped around her ankles, sharp and cool. She only walked a short distance before she found a boat. It was tied with a weathered rope to a pole that stuck up out of the sand. In the moonlight, it looked like a small currach, like the ones her father had taken her in as a small child. Almost before she could understand her own actions, she was dragging the boat along the beach and down to the water's edge. Small waves kissed the timbers of the craft and it glided into the water smoothly. She guided it with her body, one hand holding up her skirts, until the water lapped about her knees. Then she jumped in and pushed the boat further away from the beach with the oar. Her heart surged with happiness, to be out on the water, to be away from her bondage, to be free with no one to tell her what to do and what not to do. She felt wild and strong as she took both oars in her hands and began to row, pulling hard against the tide.

The shore became a pale bright strip, and then suddenly, the boat began to sway and rock, as if some sea creature had wrapped its tentacles around the prow.

‘What are you doing?' panted Gilbert, as he pulled himself up over the side. ‘This is stealing, this is our boat. I saw you from my bedroom window, running through the garden, so I followed you. I never dreamed you were going to do something stupid like this.'

‘Get out,' said Bridie, furious. ‘It's my boat now – I'm going away from here. I'm going home.'

‘But you can't row all the way back to Ireland! You're mad!'

He tried to pull himself into the boat, but Bridie swung an oar and knocked him back into the black water. He sank under the waves, his pale golden hair swirling down into darkness.

Bridie leaned over the side of the rowboat and plunged her hand into the sea, grasping a handful of hair.

‘Let go!' he shouted as he broke the surface. ‘I can swim perfectly well. I don't need you to save me.'

Bridie sat back and let him climb on board, seawater running off his clothes.

‘Bridie, you can't row back to Ireland,' he said, wiping the water from his eyes. ‘You know you can't. You'd be exhausted before you even made it across the bay. You're being stupid.'

Bridie stared at him. She knew he was right. All her resolution flooded out of her and she crumpled as she grasped the mad impossibility of her instinct, the hopelessness of her situation. She slumped in her seat and let the oars slide from her hands. Gilbert leaned forward and grasped them.

‘Bridie, here, move over,' he said. ‘We'll row back in together. I can't quite manage this boat all by myself.'

Bridie didn't respond. All the rage and fire was draining out of her, sucked into the big black bay. She shut her eyes and let hot tears course down her cheeks.

‘Two years,' she said despairingly. ‘Two years of Mrs Arbuckle trying to “save” me and dopey Dora telling me what to do, and then maybe longer – maybe until I'm nineteen, until I'm a grown woman! How will I endure it? I'll never be able to bring Brandon to me. Caitlin and I, we were going to save all our wages and have a home together. Caitlin, she was like my sister, but she's lost too. And I promised Brandon I'd make a home that he could come to one day, but I'll never have one, never. And Brandon will forget me and nothing will ever change.'

Gilbert looked out across the dark waters. ‘Everything changes, even if you don't want it to. Two years isn't so long. It takes four months to get home to England. I tell you what, we could write to him again. If I was your brother, I'd never forget you. I'd wait, however long it took.'

Bridie brushed her hand across her face, wiping away the tears.

‘You'd do that?'

‘Of course I would, and Brandon will too. Don't tell my brothers I said that.'

Bridie laughed, a little hiccuping sound that echoed with the trace of a sob.

They pulled the rowboat back up onto the beach and Gilbert tied it firmly to the post. Then they trudged up through the tangle of ti-trees. The driveway shone brilliant white in the moonlight and the air seemed suddenly warm against their damp skin. Bridie looked up at the night sky.

‘Sometimes I think I'm in a dream and tomorrow I'll wake up and be in my home above Dunquin. Or now, that we'll turn this corner up ahead and there'll be the path from the beach up to my house. I don't know where I am or where I belong any more.'

‘Look up,' said Gilbert. ‘At the stars. Then you'll always know where you are. See those stars there? That's the Southern Cross. Those are the stars you're under now. You never saw them from your Dunquin, did you?'

Bridie stopped and turned her face up to look at the huge night sky. For a moment, until she fixed on the stars, she could imagine she was on the beach with Brandon and not with this white-gold English boy. She reached up with one hand to trace the outline of the Southern Cross with her fingertips.

‘I'm glad you didn't go,' said Gilbert. ‘Glad you didn't get away.'

Bridie glanced across at him. His eyes were bright in the dark night.

‘And I'm sorry I swiped you with the oar,' she said. ‘It's just as well your head's as thick as your hide.' Then the grin came and she couldn't stifle it, and the next moment they were both laughing, a wild night-sky laugh beneath the Southern Cross.

22

Hearts of fire

Bridie knew that Gilbert must have spoken to his sister. When Miss Charity asked if Bridie could stay on as her kitchen maid, Mrs Arbuckle tried to argue that Bridie was too unskilled to be anyone's servant, but Miss Charity simply smiled and insisted on having her way. No one ever contradicted Miss Charity when she made her wishes clear. Bridie watched with growing admiration as Miss Charity stated her case in the kitchen on that warm October afternoon. Charity looked exactly like Gilbert when she was sure of her course, wearing down her opposition with a sharp, determined smile.

Once the decision was made, Mrs Arbuckle set about teaching Bridie as much as possible in the course of the next few days. Dora sullenly stood at the trough washing pots and pans while Bridie followed Mrs Arbuckle around the kitchen, committing all her instructions to memory. A daily would be coming in from St Kilda village to do most of the cooking, but Bridie would be the person responsible for all the day-to-day chores in the kitchen. Mrs Arbuckle warned her that she'd be working harder than she ever worked at Beaumanoir, but Bridie's heart sang at the thought of being so independent.

Bridie felt at home in the little kitchen at Beaumer. Even though the cook from the village took control of it much of the day, Bridie loved the quiet nights and early mornings when she had it to herself and could pretend it was her very own. She slept in the small lean-to that was built onto the back wall of the kitchen and she loved the way the scent of firewood and food drifted into her tiny room. Some nights, she'd drag her little pallet bed outside and sleep beneath the stars; if it was cooler, she could pull it closer to the stove.

Every morning, Bridie got up before dawn. It was her favourite time of day. After stoking the fire, she'd cook breakfast for Miss Charity and Mr Degraves. They would eat in the small breakfast room at the side of the house. Bridie would make sure that everything was laid out just as Mr Degraves liked it, carefully arranging all the small jars of marmalade, honey and jam, making sure that the silverware was shiny and his favourite breakfast cup was in place. She fried slices of soft bread in pork fat, and cooked kidneys and creamy scrambled eggs with lots of butter and sherry, just the way he liked them.

Martin Degraves was very particular about what he would and wouldn't eat. He never spoke to Bridie as she moved in and out of the room, freshening the tea and bringing extra butter and toast, but after the meal, as she was washing the breakfast dishes, Miss Charity would come out to the kitchen and discuss whether the eggs had enough cream mixed in with them or whether the tea was brewed exactly as the Master liked it.

The only times Martin Degraves spoke directly to Bridie was when he'd come in late from a night in town. On the nights he was not at home, Bridie slept in her clothes so that when she woke to the sound of his heavy footfall in the kitchen, she could leap up and set to work, cooking his favourite late-night snack of pig's trotters. If he'd had a pleasant evening, he'd smile as she served him, but sometimes he'd be in a dark and angry mood and not even notice her as she crept in with the tray. On those nights, he would sit alone in the front parlour for hours, cradling a glass of brandy in his hand, while Miss Charity slept on overhead.

Bridie remembered how her father used to come home late after sharing a few whiskeys with Mick O'Farrell, singing, and fall laughing into bed beside her mother. But drink didn't seem to bring Martin Degraves much happiness, and when his mood was dark, Bridie's heart ached for her gentle mistress. She knew how much Miss Charity wanted him to be happy.

Bridie knew she should think of Miss Charity as Mrs Degraves now but it seemed impossible that someone so young and kind could be a mistress. Miss Charity was so easy to work for. Like Gilbert, she seemed pleased with and interested in everyone and everything around her. And there was no one she was as passionate about as her new husband. She watched him constantly, looking for ways to please him. Bridie discovered there was no surer way to cheer-up her mistress than to take good care of all Mr Degraves' needs. Looking after Martin Degraves became a passion for both of them. Bridie made sure that his boots were clean and shiny, his white shirts perfectly starched and pressed, and his meals inviting and satisfying. Even though Bridie had so much housework to do, she longed to be allowed to cook all their meals. Mrs Smythe, the cook from the village, was a big, silent woman who set about her work with a firm hand and small conversation. But Bridie watched everything she did, learning more recipes and ways to please her master and mistress with each passing day.