No Enemy but Time (13 page)

‘Blanche, are you quite sure you want to do this?'

Blanche Arbuthnot finished pouring him a cup of tea. He noticed she needed two hands to lift the silver pot. She had grown very frail. Hugh Lorimer had been her solicitor for years; he was also a family friend. The firm of Lorimer and Leach was long established in Fitzwilliam Square. They were as much part of the Anglo-Protestant establishment as the clients they looked after.

Blanche said, ‘My dear man, of course I'm sure. I've thought it over very carefully and you know I don't make up my mind in a hurry.'

He took the teacup from her. ‘It's a very final step,' he said. ‘Quarrelling with Philip is one thing, but disinheriting him completely …'

‘Blaming me for his wife's death and refusing to speak to me for seventeen years is hardly “quarrelling”,' she retorted. ‘It's no good, Hugh. I'm not paying lip service to convention. My money's going to my grandson. And this place. Philip's very well off; John left him Riverstown and everything on trust till my death. He won't suffer any hardship.'

‘Tell me, Blanche, does he know you're ill?'

She said casually, ‘I think the Dornaways wrote to him, but I haven't heard any more. He's very proud; it's too difficult for him to do anything about it now. And too late, as far as I'm concerned.'

‘It's never too late,' Hugh Lorimer insisted. ‘Let me write to him.'

‘No, Hugh dear. Philip knows I've got cancer. I've got to put my affairs in order. I want you to draw up the will exactly as I've said, and let me have it as soon as possible.'

‘You've never seen the boy?'

‘Not officially. I've seen him twice out hunting, when we were following by car. He's the image of Philip. Nice-looking boy, very good seat. I think of him a lot, you know. Cake?'

He shook his head. If the son was proud, the mother was no less so. But she couldn't hide the pain.

‘It was so dreadful, his mother dying like that. I know Claudia's been a good stepmother – she's the kindest woman in the world – but I thought he looked a sad sort of a boy. And, since we're talking about it, I want to make amends for the way I treated his mother. I wasn't at all kind, and that's been on my conscience ever since.'

‘It's no good blaming yourself,' he countered. ‘It was a hopeless misalliance. Most people would have reacted as you did. Her death was a tragedy, but who knows what kind of disaster that marriage would have been if she'd lived? You can't hold yourself responsible for what happened.'

‘I don't,' Blanche Arbuthnot said. ‘But who can say how it would have turned out? I don't make judgements any more. No, Hugh, I'm talking about something much less dramatic. I've heard rumours round the place that Philip doesn't like his boy. The favourite is my granddaughter Claire. I want to protect Francis in case they fall out. I know the Arbuthnots.' She smiled, and her face dissolved in wrinkles. She was a bad colour, he thought. Once famous for her complexion, she was almost jaundiced now. ‘They're as hard as the Scots and as unforgiving as the Irish. Not that my John wasn't the best in the world. Maybe Francis will think of me kindly one day. I hope so. I've missed knowing my grandchildren so much.'

‘All right,' Hugh said. ‘If you really want it done this way, I'll get it drawn up and sent down for you to sign. You can always change your mind, my dear.'

‘Not unless I do it in the next three months,' she told him.

He said, ‘I didn't know it was that soon. I'm so sorry.'

‘Don't be,' she said. ‘I've had a very good life and quite a long one. I don't want to linger on in hospital with tubes and drugs and all that messy business. I shan't suffer much, they tell me, and I'll be here in my own surroundings. It's as good a way as any. Now, my dear Hugh, I'm going to send you on your way. One thing the damned illness does is make me tired for very little. It's been so lovely to see you. Give my love to Jean and maybe you'll come down and bring the will with you? We might as well have lunch, if I'm up to it. Why doesn't Jean come too? Haven't seen her for ages.'

‘Why not?' he said. He shook her hand. It was dry and limp. He felt unbearably sad. He left, promising to come down with his wife and make a party of it. It was an empty promise. He hurried the will into proper form and brought it down for signature. Blanche was confined to bed most of the time; he didn't stay long because she was so weary and there was a nurse who bustled him out.

He had telephoned Philip Arbuthnot twice and been fobbed off. He wouldn't come to the phone when he heard who it was. He knew his mother was dying and he either couldn't or wouldn't go to see her. Hugh's last scruples about seeing him cut out of the will were satisfied by writing him a personal letter of appeal. It was answered by Claudia. It was despairing and made him uneasy for a long time afterwards. Philip had no reason to play the hypocrite. He would not be going to the funeral either. Surely, the letter said with a surprising burst of bitterness, Eileen Ryan would rest easy in her grave at last.

Blanche Arbuthnot was buried in the family plot at Naas. Claudia Arbuthnot attended with a crowd of cousins and old friends. The two children were not there. Francis was at school in England in the middle of his studies, and Claire was considered too young. It gave Hugh Lorimer some satisfaction to inform Philip that his son had inherited the estate in Meath and a personal fortune of a quarter of a million pounds.

The TWA jet from New York landed at Dublin airport at just after ten o'clock in the morning. It was a full passenger load; the tourist class was full and Kevin Ryan had just managed to secure a seat in first class. He had slept during the flight and woke refreshed, with a tremor of excitement niggling in his stomach. It was his first visit to Ireland in twenty years. He wondered how much he would find changed. He was very different from the dour young man who'd set off all those years ago. He was thicker set, with a suspicion of belly overhanging the crocodile belt; his sandy hair had been fashionably crew-cut and he wore glasses.

He checked the time of arrival on a big gold bracelet watch, and there were handsome cuff-links with a shamrock in tiny emeralds in each shirt-sleeve. He was rich and he liked to show it. He dressed expensively, wore hand-made shoes and pure silk shirts. He smelled of aftershave and talcum powder. His wife, Mary Rose, slipped into a mink coat as they prepared to disembark. They had been married fourteen years and there were four strapping children. Kevin peered out of the window at the grey tarmac and the rain, and wondered what the family would say when they saw him and his wife. Photographs had winged their way across, and presents at Christmas and Easter, with Mammy's birthday a speciality. The father was long dead. Kevin had been poor then and unable to get home for the funeral. A visit to the grave was on his schedule. His eyes pricked at the thought. He had long forgotten how he had despised the old man for being mean and ignorant. That was one pilgrimage to make with Mary Rose.

The other he reserved for himself. Not that he hadn't told her the story of his sainted sister Eileen, and how she died giving birth to her child. Hounded to her death by a cruel mother-in-law, neglected by her husband … the same husband who'd carried on with a woman when she was hardly cold in her grave. And then married her. It was a grim tale and the children were brought up on it, along with Mary Rose, who ummed and aahed in horror every time she heard it.

It was part of the folklore among their friends, part of the legend which was growing up around Kevin Ryan, the man who'd married old Heraghty's daughter and made a small furniture-manufacturing business into a multi-million-dollar corporation with branches right across the States. Ryan, the Irish philanthropist and champion of Irish freedom. He had political ambitions, and knew how to make friends at Tammany Hall. And he was generous with his money. He supported orphanages and schools, underprivileged children went on camping holidays at his expense. He was a financial and moral pillar of the Catholic Church, and Mary Rose devoted herself to committees and fund-raising when he decided to run for the Senate. He had been defeated the first time, but that foray into the arena had taught him a lot. A great deal of money and effort had been wasted, but at least some useful lessons had been learned. Next time, he'd won.

He had talked of going home for years; yet excuses came up for delaying till next year and the year after. Kevin didn't know why he put it off because the reasons for doing so were always valid. His eldest son had a mastoid operation; there was a big building programme that needed his personal attention. Mary Rose was pregnant for the fourth time and not feeling too good.

And then the time was suddenly right, and there they were, stepping out on to the blessed soil of his native land. It was right because he was rich and confident enough to introduce Mary Rose to his terrible clod of a brother and his wife, and to Mammy, who was old and senile and sat like a statue in a corner by the kitchen fire. He could show her the house where he was born and the farm, and be proud now, because he was the big success come home, and the family and friends would be in awe of him. Hadn't he actually been elected to the State Senate – old Jack Ryan's youngest lad? It would be a triumph.

He'd hired a smart car for their visit; he joked with Mary Rose about driving on the right side of the road. She shut herself in out of the drizzling rain, and expressed her delight with everything. The roads were quaint, the way they twisted round, and wasn't Dublin just beautiful, with all those darling old buildings … He took her on a tour of the city, and she enthused over the faded glories of Georgian architecture and the charm of the bridges spanning the river Liffey. She sighed over the poverty and squalor of the streets they had to pass through on their way out of Dublin. So poor, she said, forgetting the misery of the ghettos in New York; the poor children going barefoot in the dirt.

‘Seven hundred years of British rule,' Kevin declared, and she saw the tight line of his mouth. ‘You don't undo that in a hurry.'

She was surprised by his hatred sometimes, but then he'd been born there and grown up, while she was second-generation American. He was right, of course. She had been brought up on Ireland's suffering under British rule. But for her husband it was so real. And then there was his sister. What a tragedy that must have been for them all.

Mary Rose was a kind and simple woman, in awe of her husband, as she had been of her father, as she was of her parish priest. She dressed elegantly and had social graces which Kevin didn't have, but her role in life was rooted in the peasant culture of her family's origins. She was the mother and the wife and the queen of the home, as Our Lady had been queen of the little family at Nazareth. She was perfectly content and regarded the liberated woman as a creature to be pitied. She loved her husband and her children, and for Kevin's sake, she would love his family too.

The drive up to the Ryans' farm was muddy and unkempt. The old house loomed up at them with a shelter of laurel bushes and some lean-limbed yew trees. Mary Rose had seen photographs, but they were flattering. On a wet day, it was dark and uninviting, the door and window frames painted green, contrasting with the dirty grey stone façade.

Kevin didn't notice this, or pause to open the door for his wife and take her with him. He sprang out of the car and was banging on the front door. He felt elated, warm-hearted at the sight of the place where he'd been born. His brother opened it, the heavy figure of his wife Bridget in the hallway behind him.

‘Hello there, Shamus.'

They grasped hands and pumped up and down, and Mary Rose picked her way through the muddy forecourt and approached, her smile at the ready. The brothers weren't alike, except for the sandy hair. Shamus was thinner and looked quite a lot older. She noticed his collarless shirt was faintly grimy and there was a button missing. His cardigan was not very clean either and had a hole in the elbow. He greeted her very warmly and blushed in the sweetest way when she gave him a sisterly kiss. He surely hadn't used a razor that morning either.

‘Come in, come in,' he urged them. ‘There's tea in the kitchen and a drink if ye'd rather.'

Kevin detained him for a moment. ‘Is Mammy all right?'

‘Ah, sure, she's not too bad at all,' his brother said. ‘Bridget minds her like a saint, don't ye?'

The plain, large woman in a flowered overall said quietly, ‘I do me best. She's no trouble. Wets herself now and again, but that's about all. Come in, she's waitin' for ye. Not that she'll recognize ye, her sight's none too good, but we've been tellin' her for days ye'd be coming.'

It was very warm in the kitchen. Mary Rose took off her mink and handed it to a large redheaded girl, who looked at it and stroked the silky fur before she hung it up on the back door among the muddy anoraks.

‘Is it real fur?' she asked. There was a shyness about her that Mary Rose found appealing. Her own children were much more strident. She called it confident.

‘It's mink,' she said. ‘Maybe you'll have one like it when you're a big girl.'

‘Come and say hello to Mammy.' Kevin caught her arm.

The old woman sat in a corner by the range. She was very upright, like a wizened doll, decked out in a bright flowery overall with carpet slippers on her feet. Her hair was snow-white and brushed back into a neat bun. A very long time ago, she must have been pretty. Kevin bent down and kissed her. She grasped his hand with a thin claw.

‘Kevin? Is it ye, Kevin?'

He had tears in his eyes. He held on to her, stroking the poor little bony hand holding fast to his. Twenty years. Half blind and so rapidly aged. He'd forgotten how women aged in Ireland. Hard unremitting work and bearing children made them old before their time.