The Made Marriage (13 page)

As she glanced about at the wild landscape Kate felt a growing sense of unreality. Was it really she, Kate Norbert, who was pushing this bone-shaking old bicycle belonging to an eccentric elderly lady whom she had met only that very day? She found herself looking back on her sheltered existence at The Trinket Box with a kind of wonder
:
how quiet and even had been the tenor of their lives in the little market town where time had flowed past without much interest or excitement! But did she really regret those days
?
she wondered. When Margot married, her own last link with England would be broken. Perhaps when Mrs. Murphy returned, she might get another job in the neighbourhood. After all, she was beginning to become familiar with the countryside and had struck up an acquaintance with some of the villagers. Better to stay adjacent to Laragh than to go farther afield, she told herself. But once again her native honesty made her admit to herself that it was the fact that in remaining near Laragh she would also be near Owen that prompted the decision.

Somehow the knowledge gave her a feeling of unbearable melancholy: she was no longer free, she realised: her feelings for Owen had become a bondage and one without hope of release for Owen, apart from considering her an embarrassment, had only too obviously no interest in her whatsoever.

Wrapped up in her thoughts, it was only when she had remounted and was bowling down the incline that she realised with a stab of alarm that the road that appeared to be leading her farther and farther into the mountainous part of the country was completely unfamiliar and that she must have lost her way. It was at this point that she heard a loud report as the front tyre punctured on the flinty road.

She dismounted, only then feeling how her muscles ached from the unaccustomed exercise. The handlebars slipped from her fingers and the bicycle fell on to the side of the road with a loud crash as she sank wearily on to a large boulder.

The deserted countryside seemed sinister and inimical, and her heart beat fast as she remembered the stories Joe had told her when he had eased into the kitchen at odd minutes of the day for what he called ‘a sly cup of tea’; stories of the wail of the banshee proclaiming an imminent
death in certain families; stories of the sheegwee and the evil leprechauns who haunt the mountains. Her thin cotton frock did little to keep out the chill air. Apart from that, she was beginning to feel hungry, for she had not eaten anything since morning: the idea of offering her refreshment had evidently not occurred to Doretta.

Another aspect of her predicament occurred to her; Florrie Lawlor, she felt sure, would make a great fuss as darkness closed in and she had not yet made an appearance. When they phoned Ballyfeeny and discovered that she had set off on her return journey they would probably search for her. But the prospect of being rescued by Owen did nothing to raise her spirits. He would consider
s
he was making a nuisance of herself and show her scant sympathy, she felt sure.

When at last, after what seemed aeons of time, she heard the sound of an approaching car, her forebodings proved to be only too correct.

The big expensive-looking car drew up, Owen leaned out of the window, and said curtly, ‘And just what are you doing siting there like patience on a monument? Do you realise that Florrie has worked herself into a fine state imagining you at the bottom of a bog hole?’

Miserable as she was, Kate didn’t miss the fact that he was making it clear that he himself had felt no anxiety concerning her whereabouts. She got stiffly to her feet. ‘I lost my way. I must have passed the signpost without noticing it.’

‘Indeed you must,’ he said sardonically as she climbed into the seat beside him.

Impossible to tell him that it was due to the fact that her mind had been fully occupied by thoughts of himself that she had missed the signpost.

‘Just exactly where did you think you were going by following that road
?
’ he asked in exasperation.

‘Oh, I thought I’d come to a village sooner or later,’
she
said vaguely.

‘Well, you wouldn’t have come to anything except the Galty Mountains and then we should probably have had a bit of a job locating you.’

‘Oh, Mrs. Lawlor’s bicycle
!’
Kate exclaimed, attempting to climb out again. ‘I nearly forgot it.’

But he leaned over and slammed the door shut. ‘Don’t mind it! It will be perfectly safe here and I’ll send someone to fetch it in the morning. It was Florrie’s blasted bicycle that led to the trouble in the first place.’

Kate refrained from telling him that he had made no attempt to dissuade her from starting out on the journey.

‘Anyway, I should have thought you’d have had enough of it to do you for years to come,’ he said grimly.

‘Well yes, I am a bit stiff,’ Kate confessed.

He glanced at her keenly. ‘And cold too, I see!’ he added, as she gave an involuntary little shiver. ‘The air up here can be icy even on the warmest day.’ Then, before she could protest, he pulled off his jacket and tucked it about her shoulders. ‘And what’s more,’ he informed her, ‘you look frightened. I expect you’ve been listening to stories of banshees and so on?’

Kate nodded shamefacedly. ‘Joe can make them sound convincing—and anyway, it’s easy to believe in all sorts of supernatural goings-on in this part of the country.’

‘Then you should show more sense,’ he said abruptly. ‘The story of the banshee originated from the cry of the curlew—and as for the sheegwee and the leprechauns, you can discount them. And now, suppose we start back before
Florrie calls out the Guards and makes a laughing-stock of the Lawlors?’

Kate nodded and settled back into the unaccustomed luxury of the car seat.

‘Do you know, Kate, you seem to have a talent for getting both yourself and me into awkward corners? Do you realise I had to go to a neighbour and borrow his car?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said contritely. ‘I know how you’d hate to ask for it.’

He glanced at her swiftly before backing the car.
‘
Do you indeed? I shouldn’t have thought you to be so perspicacious, Kate.’

‘No, you think I’m a fool for falling so easily for Nicky’s advertisement, don’t you?’

‘Not altogether! Just too romantic perhaps for your own good.’

As he turned the car and headed back along the road she was feeling flattened and dispirited. ‘No, I expect to someone like you I must appear very immature and imprudent,’ she said at last in a small voice.

‘Someone like me! And just what exactly do you mean by that ambiguous remark?’

‘Oh, someone with your arrogant attitude to life!
’

‘So I’m arrogant, am I? Surely you don’t expect me to take that as a particularly complimentary remark, do you?’

‘But I didn’t intend to be complimentary,’ Kate replied with candour. ‘I was only answering your question.’

For the first time since her arrival she heard him laugh with genuine amusement. ‘Are you always so devastatingly frank?’

‘Oh dear, I’ve put my foot in it again!’ she exclaimed in dismay. ‘Margot was always telling me that I should think before I spoke and that I’m much too forthright.’

‘But perhaps I prefer you that way.’

She glanced at him covertly, but his profile revealed nothing.

‘
You see, Kate, I’ve never liked plamas.’

‘Plamas
?
’

‘That’s the Irish word for a particular form of what you’d call soft soap.’

And no doubt Owen, as an eligible young man, had been subject to plenty of soft soap from the local girls, she thought. And it was even more subtly applied by Doretta, with her smooth Latin sophistication. But then, if he was in love with her, Owen would hardly be aware of the process, she realised. She smiled wryly. ‘At any rate
you
could never be mistaken for a plamaser!’

‘Perhaps not! Neither am I completely devoid of the softer sentiments
!’
He paused, then said a little grimly, ‘I expect you’ve already heard from Florrie that my parents’ was a made match. Well, when I marry mine certainly won’t be an arranged thing. Though, by all accounts, my father and mother had a happy life together, they died when I was a boy, so I’ve only a pretty dim memory of them.’

‘But how exactly is a made match—arranged?’ she asked hesitantly, then regretted her temerity when he didn’t answer immediately.

‘How is it arranged?’ he repeated abstractedly, as he swung the car into the road leading to Laragh. ‘Well, usually the boy and girl have met at a dance or a ceili. Perhaps they’ve spoken only a few words together, but if the boy has a suitable farm and the girl an appropriate dowry the match-maker can get to work. Sometimes he’s a close relation of the prospective groom, but professional matchmakers do exist. Anyway it’s the match-maker who conducts all the financial arrangements: he approaches the girl’s father and suggests the suitability of the marriage and if the father agrees the next stage is the “walking of the land”, which really means that the girl’s father surveys the prospective groom’s property and judges if the house is suitable and the amount of acreage extensive enough. Neither the bride nor the groom enter into things at this stage, of course, but later on, when all the final arrangements have been made, the boy and girl walk out together several times before the marriage.’

Kate wrinkled her brows. ‘It sounds a bit cold-blooded, doesn’t it?’

‘Perhaps! But you’d be amazed how many happy marriages result from it. You see, they don’t expect ecstatic happiness. They look on it more as a partnership, the husband taking care of the stock and the land and the wife ruling the kitchen and farmyard and, later on, the children
:
generally they get on very well together.’

‘But it sounds so—so unromantic!’ Kate protested.

‘And who are you to talk?’ he demanded quizzically. ‘When you answered Nicky’s advertisement did you not intend to embark on a friendship that could easily have resulted in what you consider a sordid marriage arrangement?’

‘Oh no, that was completely different,’ Kate protested, outraged at the suggestion. ‘I just wanted someone to write to—and perhaps to visit.’

‘So if the letters had been genuine on Nicky’s part you didn’t intend to marry him even after coming all this way?’

Kate hesitated, cautiously reviewing his question. He was mocking her,
s
he knew, subtly placing her in the position of a husband-hunting female, who would not be too particular who she married as long as she was in a position to wear a gold band on the third finger of her left hand
!

‘
I should never under any circumstances marry anyone I didn’t love,’ she said firmly.

‘Bravely spoken
!’
he said dryly, ‘but you should recollect that if Mrs. Murphy hadn’t broken her arm yourself and Bedsocks would have been bundled on to the Dublin train. However for once I’m inclined to agree with you. I’m not attracted by the idea of a mere partnership either, and if and when I marry it certainly won’t be the product of a made match—no matter how tempting the bride’s dowry may seem,’ he added, a smile touching the corners of his mouth. He relapsed into silence and, for the rest of the journey, seemed in an abstracted mood and Kate guessed that he had already forgotten her presence.

As they drove up to Laragh lights flooded from the windows and open hall door and as the car came to a stop Aunt Florrie hurried forward anxiously.

‘Well, here she is, safe and sound!’ Owen announced. ‘You see she wasn’t stolen away by a leprechaun or at the bottom of a bog hole, I found her sitting by the side of the road feeling sorry for herself.’

‘I wasn’t!’ Kate protested indignantly.

‘Well, if you weren’t, you should have been,’ Florrie Lawlor put in briskly, ‘for you look worn out, and hungry to boot! I’ve built up the fire in the sitting-room and left coffee and sandwiches, so in you go and help yourselves, both of you. By the way, Kate, that dratted cat of yours has done nothing but pad around the house. I think the animal’s bewitched. She seemed to know that you should have been home ages ago. I even gave her a saucer of Owen’s precious cream from the dairy, but nothing would placate her, so I planked her down in front of the sitting-room fire and shut the door—though I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if she’s already guessed you’re safe and is tackling the sandwiches. By the way,’ she added, ‘what became of my pillow? Did you leave it in the car, Owen?’

‘I didn’t bring it,’ Kate put in quickly. ‘It seems it met with an accident.’

‘I can guess what kind of accident it met with,’ Florrie said significantly. ‘The twins, as usual, were up to mischief, no doubt.’

Kate nodded, ‘A pillow fight!’ Then added hastily, ‘But your bicycle’s all right. I left it by the side of the road, but Mr. Lawlor’s going to send for it.’

‘What’s this Mr. Lawlor stuff?’ Florrie barked. ‘Really, Owen, considering most of the countryside considers the worst of your relationship with Kate, isn’t it time you dispensed with formality?’

Kate blushed and tried to avoid Owen’s quizzical eye. ‘I’d love a cup of coffee,’ she said quickly.

‘Then you shall have one,’ he said gravely, and to her surprise she felt him place his arm about her shoulders as he led her towards the sitting-room. ‘You know, Kate,’ he said, ‘I think there’s something in what Aunt Florrie says. It’s time you and I got on friendlier terms. Who knows, if I hadn’t arrived in the nick of time you might have been kidnapped by a leprechaun and taken away to the land of Tir Nan Og where you would have remained for ever young, whereas I should have become an old man for ever searching for you.’

She glanced at him shyly. He was mocking her, she knew, but there was an ambiguous undercurrent in his manner that puzzled her. To her relief it was Bedsocks who came to her rescue, for as they entered the room she was jumping down from the table leaving behind traces of her depredations in a half nibbled sandwich. At the sight of Kate, she wriggled forward ingratiatingly with a little miaow of pleasure.

Kate picked up the cat and buried her face in the soft fur. ‘Bedsocks,’ she murmured reproachfully, ‘how could you let me down like this?’

But Bedsocks, seeing that her mistress was showing no great concern at her depredations, had fixed her topaz eyes on the half-eaten sandwich and with one bound had sprung from Kate’s arms and landed on the tray, scattering sandwiches and coffee on the carpet.

Kate looked aghast as the coffee soaked into a white sheepskin rug leaving a growing dark stain, but, to her surprise, Owen burst into laughter.