No Enemy but Time (9 page)

She wiped her eyes and let the clutch in. The exit on to the Naas road was the most dangerous in Kildare. Tears blurred her vision as she swung out, hammering on the horn. She only just missed a donkey cart that was too far over to the left. The driver yelled curses at her, slashing in fright at the helpless donkey. Blanche drove on and three hours later she was safe in Dornaway Castle, where she seemed so shaken that they put her straight to bed.

‘I did everything you told me,' Eileen mumbled.

‘Yes, darling, of course you did.' He held her hand and soothed her, but she was fretful and kept repeating herself.

‘I did my best. She was so horrible …' Tears were seeping down her cheeks. He wiped them away, murmuring to her to forget about it, not to worry. He was just so desperately sorry she was upset. Doctor Baron had given her something, she ought to let him put the light out and go to sleep.

‘I hate her,' she whispered. ‘She hates me and I hate her.'

‘Don't say things like that,' Philip begged her. ‘Please, sweetheart.'

He had rung for Baron, who came over and examined her briskly. ‘She's just having a grumble,' he reassured Philip. ‘Nothing to worry about; it can happen around the seven months, but we don't want her going into labour. I've given her a draught. You settle her down now and she'll be right as rain in the mornin'. I'll look in on her round dinner time.'

But Eileen didn't sleep, and by nine o'clock the pain had become stronger. He telephoned the doctor again. A slow-witted girl drove him mad, trying to spell his name, saying himself was out on a call and the missus visiting relatives. No, sure she'd no notion where to find him, but he might ring the house in an hour or so, to see if there were any messages.

When he came upstairs to the bedroom he found Lily standing by the bed, and Eileen clutching her hand and moaning.

‘The missus rang for me,' she whispered. ‘Sure, God love her, she's goin' to give birth.'

‘The doctor's out,' Philip said. ‘Nobody knows where he is or when he'll be back! Lily, stay here with her. I'm going to get Lady Hamilton to come over.'

Claudia drove the ten miles separating them at reckless speed. She knew panic when she heard it, and sheer panic was in Philip Arbuthnot's voice. She ran into the hall and up the stairs. She was in a dinner dress, with a coat thrown over it. They had been in the middle of a party when his call came. She saw the housemaid, Lily, standing on one side, and Philip, grey and hollow-eyed with fear, holding on to Eileen. She didn't scream; she moaned and cried with pain, pulling at the bedclothes, jerking her swollen body up and down with the contractions.

Mary Donovan put her head round the door. ‘Oh, thank God your Ladyship's here,' she breathed. ‘Shouldn't we go for the midwife?'

Claudia didn't waste a minute. ‘Philip, get the car out. Lily, pack some night things for Mrs Arbuthnot, just the minimum. Mary, you come and hold on to her. I'm going to phone the Rotunda and say we're bringing her in now.'

Claudia insisted on driving. ‘You look after Eileen,' she said. ‘You're in no state to drive anyway. I'll get there, don't worry.'

He sat in the back, cradling his wife in his arms. Every racking pain tore at him; he hadn't wept since he was a child, but his cheeks were wet as he tried to comfort her.

‘Darling, don't fight it, try to relax. We're getting you to hospital. You'll be fine.'

‘No, no, not hospital. I don't want to go to hospital.' Her fear surprised him. ‘Don't take me there,' she whimpered. ‘I'll die if I go there. The baby'll die.' And then the pain came, turning her protest into a low cry of anguish.

She had started the second stage of labour when they carried her into the Rotunda and hurried her away into the labour ward. Claudia took charge; Philip stood helplessly while she talked to the ward sister and exerted her considerable authority to get the doctor called immediately. Then she turned to Philip and took his arm.

‘Come on, we'll go to the waiting room. They'll bring us a cup of tea.'

It wasn't a long vigil. They sat in the dingy room, with its green painted walls and picture of the Sacred Heart, a tiny red eye of an oil lamp burning in front of it. The smell of disinfectant was acrid.

‘She'll be all right,' Claudia insisted. And then, because she had spoken quietly to the ward sister, she thought it best to warn him. ‘It may be a bit difficult for the baby. It's very early, you see.'

‘I don't care about the baby,' Philip said, and with those few words he doomed his unborn son. ‘I want Eileen safe and well. That's all I care about.'

When the door opened and the sister appeared, he sprang up.

‘Mr Arbuthnot? Would you come and see Doctor O'Brien, please.'

‘My wife …' Claudia heard him say as he went out. ‘How's my wife?'

The pain and the exertion had stopped. So had the warm gushing blood that streamed out of her body, taking her life with it. She floated between dreams and fits of consciousness, then she saw Philip leaning over her and she thought someone said, ‘You've got a lovely little boy, thanks be to God …' but it didn't seem real. Her mother-in-law was real. The anger wouldn't go away. She mumbled in delirium.

‘I hate her … I hate them all … Mammy. Where's Mammy?'

The doctor had left them. There was no more he or anyone could do.

The ward sister said, ‘Your wife said she was a Catholic. I've sent for the priest. She's calling for her mother. She wouldn't be here in time. Here's Father Cochran now.' She was surprised and offended when he left the room.

He stood in the corridor outside while the priest prepared his wife for death. He felt nothing. Nature is kind, he thought, sometimes it's kind. As it was cruel to Eileen, who'd bled to death after the birth of her tiny baby. He couldn't cry, he couldn't feel; he didn't know how long he stood outside the door, leaning against the greasy wall. It was a boy, they told him. Very small, but no signs of jaundice and breathing normally, thanks be to God. It was early days, he must understand, but there was hope. He must have closed his eyes because the priest was suddenly in front of him. He was an old man, blinking behind very thick glasses. He carried a shabby bag with his stole and the sacraments in his left hand.

‘You can go into her now,' he said. ‘It was a beautiful death she made. She just smiled and went to heaven.' He said the same to all bereaved. It eased the pain of loss for the devout. He touched Philip on the arm. ‘God's given you a child,' he said. ‘Try to be comforted.'

There was nothing Philip could say. Standing so close he smelt the fusty clothes and a sour whiff on the old man's breath. What was beautiful about the death of a young girl, leaving a motherless child? There was no comfort her priest could give Philip.

‘Thank you, Father Cochran.'

‘I'm told the baby's very small,' the priest said. ‘T'would be wise if I baptize him now.'

Philip Arbuthnot said, ‘My son will be brought up an Anglican. Excuse me.' He turned his back and went in to say goodbye to his wife.

Claudia Hamilton made the arrangements. He didn't want Eileen to lie in the Catholic cemetery in Naas, since the place reserved for the Arbuthnots was forbidden to her. She was buried in Dublin. Her family were not invited to attend.

The baby was strong enough to go back to Riverstown with a monthly nurse after six weeks and he was duly baptized a Protestant in the Church of Ireland in Naas. Claudia was among his godparents. He was called Francis Alexander William, which were all family names.

Philip was not allowed to be lonely. Friends rallied to him and Claudia installed a housekeeper and a nanny. The little boy was strong and he flourished. Philip went to see him twice a day, encouraged by Claudia, who hoped the child would make up to him for Eileen. But he turned more and more to her. James Hamilton had joined the British Army at the outbreak of war. By the time he was killed in North Africa, Claudia and Philip had become lovers.

It was Mary Donovan who suggested that Eileen's younger brother might slip in to see his nephew before he left for America. It was a nagging frustration for Mary to go up to the Ryans and not be able to talk about what was going on at Riverstown. Surely Bridget Ryan had aged since her daughter's death. There was a quietness about her that Mary had seen before when people were losing their hold on life. Old Jack was drunker at night than usual, and the yob of an elder son glowered by the hearth and waited for
him
to die. One evening Kevin came to the bus stop with her. They stood hunched against the rain and he said in his laconic way, ‘How's Eileen's boy?'

Now, two days before he sailed for New York, Mary smuggled him in to see the child. He came in through the back door on Lily's afternoon out. The rest of the maids had been threatened with hell-fire and damnation if they breathed a word. Bernadette had been sacked for cheeking the nurse. Mary had smiled to see her go. The nurse slept in her room for two hours while Francis dozed in his nursery.

Kevin went up the back stairs, Mary chattering like a magpie. He didn't bother to listen. His sister had lived in the big gloomy house for such a little time. She had left no impression. She had come and gone like a shadow.

‘He's in here,' Mary said, opening a door.

Kevin had never seen a nursery before. At home the children all slept together and the new baby with its parents till it came off the breast. Everything was white and clinical as if the child were in a hospital. There was no holy picture on the wall, with its little oil lamp, no homely touch he recognized. A cot swathed in draperies and blue ribbon stood isolated in a corner. He approached, and looked in at the boy.

‘He's awake, so,' Mary whispered.

He had a thatch of black hair and wide eyes, so dark blue they were changing colour already. There was nothing to remind him of Eileen. Just a black Arbuthnot, like the rest of them. He turned away, and his eyes filled with tears.

‘So that's all that's left of her,' he said.

‘Don't mind that he takes after
them,'
Mary murmured. ‘I've seen babies lose all their hair and come out a different colour.'

‘It's what's in him that counts,' Kevin said. ‘But he'll never know the Irish half of him. That bastard had him baptized a Protestant.'

‘She gave her life for her faith,' Mary said. ‘She was too frail in herself. But not in vain, thanks be to God. The nurse who brought him home said the sister baptized him herself the very night he was born. So much good did it do them to take him up to that heathen place in Naas. God's grace is in him, Kevin. It'll come out in good time!'

He leaned down and touched the child with one finger. The skin was soft and smelled sweet. He remembered the sour smell of his tiny sisters that wrinkled the nose.

‘Good luck to him,' he said. ‘Maybe one day he'll know the truth about himself.' He turned away. He didn't want to sit gossiping in the kitchen with that old slob of a cousin. He wanted to get out of that hated house and everything it represented. Many of his friends were joining the British Army. It seemed a kind of treason. He had relatives in America on his mother's side. He would have shared the farm with his brother in the end, as was the Irish custom, but he didn't want that kind of life. He didn't want to end up a mean and ignorant man like his father, or spend the years bickering with brother Shamus. There was no real future for the Irish in Ireland while the country was divided and people like the Arbuthnots held the land and the power in actuality. In America, it was an advantage to be Irish.

He said goodbye to Mary, cutting the blessings short, and hurried away down the drive to the road. He walked hunched into himself, as if the rain were beating on him, though that afternoon the sun was shining.

It was nearly twenty-six years before he saw his nephew again.

Chapter 3

Claire went through to the gun room. Years ago, it held the family collection of sporting guns, encased in mahogany. It was a male preserve, consecrated to sport, where guns were cleaned after a day's shooting and guests would be shown valuable old museum pieces that had been used by earlier Arbuthnots. It belonged to an age Claire could well remember, when there were big shooting parties at Riverstown, and she followed on foot with her mother and joined the guns for lunch. Frank was a superb shot. That at least he and his father had in common. When they were young there had been no need to lock the gun room. For years, since the trouble began in the North, all firearms, even the most ancient, were kept under lock. Her father gave up shooting quite suddenly, after Frank left home. Occasionally, when she came over from England with Neil, they'd go out and take a few pigeons on a Sunday morning, but his heart wasn't in it.

Neil was devoted to Claudia, but he found Philip frankly daunting. A man who had turned his own son out of the house was not exactly comfortable as a father-in-law. To Neil, hide-bound Englishman that he was, Philip Arbuthnot was best described as Irish, because he couldn't account for him in any other way. Deep down, they hadn't liked each other.

She fitted the key and turned it. The room was shuttered and smelt of oily rags and leather. She switched on the light. The cases were empty. The Purdey guns had been sold after Philip's death, since there was nobody to use them. One gun remained in the rack: Frank's Churchill 12-bore shotgun. And hanging from a hook in its holster, her father's army revolver. She stood hesitating. Where did her father keep the ammunition for it … in one of the bottom drawers; she found the clip with the cartridges. She put them in her pocket, unlocked the cabinet and took the revolver down. It didn't fit into her pocket. It was heavy and clumsy, difficult to hide. She took her jacket off and wrapped it up, folding it awkwardly over one arm. Billy wouldn't notice if she put it on the back seat.