Chapter Eight: Baldoyle, Co. Dublin November 1909

The hunting season began on the second of November that year, the first Saturday of the month, with the Portmarnock hunt club in full cry meeting at Colonel Whitcombe's no later than seven o'clock in the morning. In Baldoyle those riding were up at five for the last minute wrappings of fetlocks and boot polishing. However scruffy they might be on a given day in the stable-yard, on hunting days Charles, Liam, and Molly were always splendidly turned out. This was so true that Fa had once told Liam he had better pray for a hunting bride so he could be married in his pinks - the only guarantee that he would be properly dressed. Liam took such teasing casually, as about the house Fa was known for wearing mostly old cardies and house slippers, and so was hardly a picture of elegance.

Liam and Molly met in the upper hall first, when she was coming from the water closet before daylight. He took one look at her pale face, and even in his half-asleep state had the wit to ask,
‘I say, are you ill? You look awful.’
She shook her head. ‘Don't ask. See you at brekkers.’ And she went into her room and closed the door. She dressed with quick efficiency borne of long practice in her best black serge habit with its trailing skirt. Hunting days were the only time she did wear skirts to ride; the rest of the time she rode astride in trousers or jods. But on hunting days she bowed to convention, to the habit and sidesaddle, however uncomfortable it might be in a corset and piles of underwear. She had tried a union suit one year, but it was worse with stays than the usual ladies’ nonsense, for she couldn’t reach the buttons. The club had strict rules for attire left over from the 18th century. It was all a bore. She wished she could wear jodhpurs; last year she’d got her skirt tangled on a jump and nearly broken her leg.

When she came downstairs later Liam was standing at the buffet in the breakfast room spreading jam on his toast. Fa was not yet down. She put her bowler, gloves, and crop on the chair with Liam’s and poured herself a cup of tea. She sat languidly at the far end of the table in a cold sweat, feeling dreadful. The fine mahogany sheen of the table reflected her paleness. She had forgotten rouge. They’d ask what was the matter with her. In the days when she was ill, her colour had been so hectic that she'd not needed it, and the pot was somewhere at the back of her handkerchief drawer. There wasn’t time to run up for it; by the time breakfast was done, it would be too late. Joe was already bringing the horses out. Liam sat down with a plate piled with eggs, rashers of bacon, potato cakes, black pudding and toast. The smell was nauseating. The black pudding was the worst. She could hardly tolerate the sight of it, let alone the smell, in the best of times. Made of the congealed blood from freshly killed hogs, she thought it repulsive on principle. It was enough to make one want to go off meat entirely.

She sat moodily for about five full minutes while Liam bolted his breakfast down, staring at the candlesticks on the table determinedly to keep herself from retching. At length, she got up, her skirt trailing the floor behind her, took a piece of toast from the rack - plain - and flung herself in the chair again. Impossible to eat, but since they were rushed perhaps it wouldn’t be noticed. She hadn’t touched the tea either. Worse luck, Liam said as Fa came in buttoning his tattersals over his starched shirtfront,
‘Are you on prison rations?’ He looked at her breakfast with derision.
‘Eh?’ Charles said, squinting at her from the opposite end of the table. ‘Eat up, girl! We’ll be out all day.’ He went to the buffet and came back with a large, heavily loaded plate also.
The combination was too much. Panic assailing her, as she went weak with sickness, Molly rose. She needed fresh air immediately or there would be a disgrace. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘Excuse me, I must see to Chessie -’ and she bolted out the hall door and into the drive, helping Joe unnecessarily with loading her horse in the van. In the car, Liam poked her.
‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘Not now!’ she hissed.
‘You’re not ill?’ he persisted.
‘Shut up,’ she muttered. He shrugged and looked out of the window.

There was the usual brandy passed around in the yard at Whitcombe’s but being a lady she could thankfully decline. She was better in the cold air, and once they started down the lane towards the open pastureland surrounding the village she was fine. Her brother came up beside her on the right, bringing the Painter close in. He must have known something was up. There was no other need for such secrecy, Fa was far ahead with the elder statesmen, for they rode according to ranking, and the young people ranked last, after the ladies. It was unfair for they would have to overtake the bloody lot of them on the field, but form was form and would not be changed.

‘So what was all that?’ Liam asked. She glanced at him sidelong. Oh, he was resplendent in his pinks! She did love the sight of him on hunting days. Really a very handsome young man. It was too bad they could not go on forever as they were, just brother and sister, breeding horses. They might have done had George not died, but now the parents - Mummy, mostly - expected him to marry and carry on the name. As for her....
‘Nothing, it was nothing,’ she replied shortly. She wished he would not ask here. God the very thought made her want to cry, and she was not the weepy sort. Proof enough if she needed it.
‘You’re acting mighty strange,’ he insisted, shaking his head. He knew. He must do. Why was he pestering her otherwise? She broke out in a cold sweat again, panic assailing her. My god, I have to have it out in the open, she thought wildly, tell somebody! Liam was her best childhood’s friend. They might row with each other, but when it came to it, she loved and trusted him above no one else alive. She jolted the horse unnecessarily, nudging her forward when there was hardly room to walk straight without bumping into the rider before.
‘So would you do if you were up the spout!’ she said under the cover of Chestnut’s obedient confusion. She patted her neck, crooning, and looked back at her brother pleadingly. There. It was out. But he didn’t know, because he turned white under his silk hat.

‘Good God!’ he muttered when he had caught her up. He hissed at her in an undertone. ‘I told you that bog Irish bastard was no good! I told you I didn’t trust him.... Do the parents know?’ She gave him a look of exaggerated patience. ‘You’re right....’ His tone became savage. ‘Does he know?’ She shook her head and her lip trembled in spite of herself. She ground her teeth and looked ahead at the group with the Master of the Hunt, stared through teary eyes, willing herself to calm.
‘He should know,’ Liam insisted, ‘the bastard.’
She rounded on him. ‘Hush! I don’t want him to know. I want no part of him....’ she could not go on.
‘You know what the parents will say,’ Liam said. They were rounding the curve of the road, and the leads where turning into the field at the gate. The village was just beyond to the right. She slowed her horse so that there was a clear space before her.
‘I’d rather die,’ she told her brother savagely, and nudged the horse forward at a trot. She was into the field and halfway across it before Liam caught her up again. They were thundering over the loose damp sod to the shrill of the horn and the hounds. The sea was before them. She heard the Painter galloping up - she would know the horse’s breath in her sleep. As Liam swept by, his pink coattails fluttering, he turned and gave her one desperate angry look. Fool! It said. What do you think you are doing?

And then he was gone, away before her, over around the hill to the first jump where the ford ran at the edge of the wood. It was she who caught him up there, crying to the horse, taking the jump at a break-neck speed. They flew and landed a good five feet clear of the bank. The close was a bottleneck, but Ches saw her stablemate before her and was bounding ahead to him. She felt the horse's joy, and the wild panic that had gripped Molly eased in the tumult. Here she was free. Here she belonged only to herself. Here she might easily, if she were lucky, fall off her horse and put the whole business to naught. She rode very hard that day, pushing the horse beyond her limits. She came to the very same fence where five years ago their brother George had died at a thundering speed, knowing full well it was a hard wall for the horse to judge because of the slope of the hill before it. She heard Liam shouting hoarsely after her, calling her name and not to kill the damned horse with her. But Ches sailed over the double wall without bother, taking the jump in just the right place on the incline. Liam caught her up when he had come over and swore her blue.

‘Are you trying to kill yourself, damned fool? After George came a cropper at that same place-’ neither of them had forgotten that he was the first one to come to Geordie's aid.
‘We've all jumped that fence a hundred times!’ She reasoned defensively, for she had taken it hard, in half-hopes of some accident. ‘It was merely Geordie's bloody bad luck.’
‘Merely Geordie's bloody drunkenness, you mean,’ Liam muttered, scowling. ‘If he hadn't been potty he'd have made it... But that leaves you out: just what the hell did you think you were doing? You could have maimed the horse and yourself ten times out there today! Do you really think that killing yourself over it is going to help Ma and Fa?’
‘Much I care about them!’ she ground out and jerked Chessie onward, riding stiff-backed and silent across the meadow in line with the others. She could never make him understand just how much she wanted this nightmare over, how desperate she felt. Even if she went to the Aunties' in Tallaght it would mean she could not be seen in Dublin for six months. No playing concerts. Perhaps never again. For how would she play, dragging a child about with her? No, she would not have it, could not! There must be nostrums, there must be something a doctor could do for a consumptive! Damn, they had told her in Harley Street that she could never have a child, that she was too thin and her menses not right. She vaguely hoped yet that it was not true, for she hadn't been concerned when she missed the curse the first time for she often did, and forgot about it. But when she'd missed it a second time and then began to be sick.... That was four days ago, and every day she was sicker than the day before.

When she dismounted at Whitcombe’s at the end of day she could hardly stand, and Ches was lathered. She limped over to Liam and took the flask from his hand, leaning hard on his arm. It was whiskey, which she hated, but she uncorked it and drank determinedly until he pulled it away from her.
‘Easy there!’ He exclaimed.
Her throat was burning, her eyes running tears, and her stomach, empty all day, revolted. ‘Oh!’ She bolted for the house.

They were home by late teatime, and she went upstairs for a bath and bed. She ate nothing for tea, nor came down to supper, pretending to be asleep when Nancy knocked. But she was not asleep, and afterward Liam knocked briefly on her door and came in, as was his habit.
‘Molls-’ He was standing beside the bed, where she still lay, looking out the windows over the stable yard.
‘What d'you want?’ she said in a tone indicating she didn't want company.
‘Will you talk to me?’ He sounded odd, like a forlorn little boy, so she rolled over and looked at him.
‘What's wrong?’ she asked with real concern. Something in his tone alarmed her.
‘I have something I want to tell you.’ He looked down and picked at his grubby fingernails, his hair falling across his brow. She sat up on the bed, pushing her hair back out of her face.
‘Wills?’ she entreated. He would not sit with her on the bed.
‘I'm leaving,’ her said evenly, looking up. His eyes were steady. ‘I wanted you to know.’
‘What!’ She exclaimed.
‘Shut up,’ he muttered, ‘will you have the whole house in here?’ He paced the floor. ‘I have to go. I can't stand it here anymore.’ He shook his head. ‘Fa wants me to begin a career I want nothing of with the bloody bank, Ma wants me to marry some society chit.... I feel closed in! I've got to do something, or they'll wear me down, and I'll wake up to find myself in thirty years the same as them.’ He said this last with contempt.

‘But you can't leave me!’ Molly cried, catching his arm. ‘I need you! Liam, I can't manage this without you-’ she looked about wildly in confusion. ‘I can't face them without you! You know how they are! Would you abandon me?’
He looked at her sadly, with a face of terrible regret. ‘It's already done,’ he said bleakly. ‘I'm leaving tonight. I have passage booked.’
‘But Will-’ she sought for some hope- ‘there must be something you could do here other than clerking at the bank! You could work for uncle Frankie, or be veterinary! We need a good veterinary!’ The nearest veterinarian was now in Malahide, and that was ten miles away. Liam smiled at her ruefully.
‘With my maths? I don't think so, Molls. But it was a good try.’ He leaned and kissed her forehead, resting his hands heavily on her shoulders. ‘I am sorry to leave you in your fix, though,’ he said earnestly. ‘I had intended telling you this morning, but you beat me to it with the news.’ He smiled, his grey eyes crinkling to narrow slits. ‘If they're too horrid, maybe you can come with me.’

‘Where are you going?’ she asked bleakly. Her one real friend in all the world, the one person on whom she knew - thought! - she could count, and he was leaving. When she was ill, he was the only one who wrote to her when she was in exile in England and Cavan.
‘England, for a start,’ he said, rising. He shrugged. ‘After that, I don't know. I hear Australia's nice.’
Her throat ached. ‘Wills, don't, I can't bear you to make a joke! What if I never see you again?’
He looked at her, troubled and serious. ‘If not then we shall know that we helped each other live through them.’ He jerked his head in the direction of downstairs. He smiled at her a little. ‘That's not so bad, is it?’ At the face she made, he said, holding out his arms ‘come here Molls, and let me say farewell.’ She got up and embraced him. Her chest ached, all the old scars, as it did when she was upset. He held her too, for a long, silent time. There was not much left to be said between cradlemates as close as they. It had all been said a hundred times before. She was hurt and bewildered by his sudden defection, but she knew that she could not make him stay if he was determined. He was stubborn that way. At last, he moved away. Both of them were dry-eyed, but both in pain. This was hard, so hard! for him as well as her. He swallowed.

‘I leave you,’ he said huskily, ‘all my mucking out clothes, my wellies, and my second-best pair of boots. Don't give them to that Irish bastard.’ He smiled at her. ‘I'll write.’ He said nothing else, it was all in the air, in his moon-grey glance. She nodded as silently, smiled bravely, and watched him go out and down the short space of hall to his own room. She heard him leave in the small hours of the morning, being awake because she'd just come back from yet another trip to the 'loo. Morning came, breakfast with it. When he did not come to breakfast, nor after it, Ellen the house-parlour girl was sent in search of him. She came back with a note, which she handed to Grace. The gist of it was, ‘I am gone, don't try to find me.’ The parents were in a state, of course. Molly pretended to know nothing.

He did not write the next fortnight, although she didn't expect him to immediately. She had other things on her mind, besides, and spent a good deal of time out of the house on Furley or Ches, because the parents were unbearably hysterical. They put adverts in the papers, offered rewards, all to no effect. It was as if Liam had vanished from the face of the earth. The awful thing was, they went on as if they really loved him, as if he had been the cherished son rather than George, instead of the badly tolerated second-best. Their mania did nothing for her disposition. She could keep no food down at all, and in a fortnight lost a stone's weight. She was so ill she had to cancel her November concert. She refused to speak to anyone on the telephone, especially Paddy, who by the time of her concert cancellation was frantic because she had not spoken to him in three full weeks. Her mother took her to the doctor in Ely Place and she was terrified that her secret would come out, but the kindly old physician, looking for phthisis, detected nothing. By rights he should have; her tits were like balloons.

Supper that evening was enlivened by a lemon soufflé, made especially for her by Mrs. Lymon to coax her back into something of an appetite. She was less than grateful, to put it mildly: the smell of it sent her running for the 'loo. She had a headache afterward, and went to lie down. Mummy was downstairs going on at full screech about ‘that gel’ -her- when the phone rang in the hall. Molly covered her head with the pillow. She could guess who it was. He always rang this time of the evening.
‘Telephone for you, Miss,’ Nancy said, after a discreet knock.
‘Tell him to go away,’ she said distinctly, lifting her head from the pillows.
There were footsteps on the stairs, and her door crashed open. It was Grace, who stood trembling in the doorway like a ship under sail.

‘Mary,’ her mother's voice sounded like a shot in the silence. Molly lifted her head from the pillow, turned. Grace's hand on the knob was white, and her face set. Her mother knew. She broke out into a cold sweat and hoped she would not be sick again. Grace closed the door.
‘Mary, Pat Leary is on the telephone downstairs. He wants to know why you won't speak to him.’ Her gaze was direct. ‘Don't you think you should go and give him an answer?’
‘We have nothing to say to one another,’ Molly said dully, turning away.
‘I think not.’ Grace said. ‘I think you have a good deal to say. I think we all have a very good deal to say. Look at me Mary.’ No one ever called her Mary except her mother, and she particularly hated it in this tone of voice. She sat up.
‘I don't know what you mean,’ she murmured. It sounded unconvincing even to her ears.
‘I think you do. Don't you think I know what's the matter with you?’ Her mother's arms were crossed and her eyes hard. She would find no sympathy there. The grey eyes that met her own were steely, the face set.
‘Yes,’ she admitted. Hope of help welled in her. ‘Mother, what am I to do?’
‘Go downstairs and tell that young man for what he is responsible,’ Grace said uncompromisingly. This irritated her considerably. ‘Oh Mother!’ She exclaimed, throwing her legs over the side of the bed. ‘He's not to blame. It was of mutual consent!’ Whatever else might be said of him, Paddy was no Casanova. She had thrown herself at him in Wicklow, after all. Her mother paled. She went past her through the door. ‘You always exhorted us to be honest, Mother,’ she said acidly, then turned and walked down the hall and the stairs.

Patsy was hovering in the hall beside the study door, eager to be in on all the excitement, no doubt.
‘Go away, you little pest,’ she told her as she picked up the phone. Patsy put out her tongue and flounced away in the direction of the back parlour.
‘Hello, Molly here,’ she said into the phone.
‘Molly!’ Paddy's voice came crackling over the line. ‘Where the hell have you been?’
‘I'm sorry,’ she said, and was not. ‘I was accosted by my mother.’ At that moment, Grace came downstairs and gave her a warning look as she passed. ‘What did you want?’
‘What do you mean, “what did I want”! For three weeks every time I've rung you've been unavailable, and this evening you're not playing, I come to find when I get there. Are you ill? What's the matter? Why won't you talk to me? Jesus, sweetheart, if I've done anything, you should let me know -’ Molly glanced down at the message pad and blotter. Fa had written something there, but it was illegible.
‘It's nothing you've done exactly,’ she said, fiddling with the phone cord.
‘What does that mean?’

She couldn't bring herself to tell him. Fear shook her and left her speechless.
‘Molly?’ he said softly. ‘Darlin, what's wrong?’ The sweet sympathy she had so wanted from her mother, coming from him, was too much.
‘I'm pregnant,’ she blurted. Hot tears scalded her eyes, but did not fall. She stood shaking like a leaf, but refused to cry. Not about this. Not for him.
‘Oh Christ!’ He exclaimed. When he spoke again, his voice was shaking. ‘When? Oh hell, it doesn't matter... Damn it, this couldn't have come at a worse time, with the tenure review coming up...’ She heard him strike a match, light a cigarette, take a drag. He was as shaken as she, but his attitude irritated her. Though it was her own.
‘Well, it's not exactly been a holiday for me either,’ she snapped. ‘I've been as sick as the dog!’
‘I'm sorry,’ he muttered. ‘Look,’ he took a long drag on the cigarette. ‘What time is it?... O hell, never mind, I'll be there in twenty minutes.’
‘But-’ He had already rung off. To get here in twenty minutes he'd have to drive like a madman. It'd do no one any good to have the constabulary out because he'd wrecked his car.... too late. She sighed and put up the phone. Better go ask Mrs. Lymon or Bridgie to make tea. It looked to be a long night.

When she came back from the kitchen, her mother was standing with her arms folded in front of the study door.
‘He's coming up,’ Molly said wearily.
‘Molly, your father would like to speak to you,’ Grace moved aside from the open door and pushed her inside. Then she closed the door and Molly was left standing in the middle of the room, staring at her father's back as he gazed out the windows into the night.
‘Fa -’
Her father turned, and his face was haggard. She was ashamed suddenly, as she had not been before. He did love her, and this had hurt him. This in addition to Liam's disappearing. She bit her lip and clasped her hands before her.
‘Come here, my dear,’ he said. She went and he opened his arms to her. She bent her head onto his shoulder, for she was taller than he. She felt completely miserable.
‘I'm sorry I let you down, Fa,’ she said in a small voice.
He put her from him. ‘I am disappointed in you, Molly,’ he said in strong, but measured tones. ‘I thought you a better Catholic than that.’ He was controlling himself so well, for she knew he was very hurt indeed. His faith was real and strong, as hers had never been.
‘I'm sorry,’ she said again. ‘I'll take it to confession tomorrow.’
He smiled sadly.’ Oh, child, would that this were something that could be cured by my forgiveness and a confession. What a coil we are all in now.’ She said nothing, and he went to sit in his chair by the fireplace. ‘Your mother is very upset, my dear. She had the notion you did this merely to embarrass her.’ She gave him an impatient look, and he held up his hand. ‘Yes, yes, but that is how she thinks, how will it look to the family. I can hardly blame her, seeing how Jocelyn goes on.... Pat is coming, yes? So I expect you've told him?’ She nodded, folding her hands before her, chastened as in convent school.

‘Good,’ Charles said. ‘He's not a bad chap, no matter what it may appear at the moment.’ He paused, gathering his thoughts. ‘Molly, your mother and I have been talking and we've come to an agreement about what we think should be done.’ She looked up, riveted. ‘Now it was my idea to send you up Frank and Violet's in Cavan the while. You've always been fond of them, and Dick and Dodo--’
‘Fa!’ she started forward in relief. It was perfect! Of course Cavan. No one in Dublin need ever know! How clever of Fa! It could stay there too, properly cared for in the country. Her father's next words brought her up short.
‘-- But I could not bring myself to put that unhappiness and chagrin onto your mother. She would not agree to my plan without a good deal of love lost between us, and I love her too much for that. She is my wife and my first loyalty lies there, as I hope you will be able to understand--’
She felt a sickening dread, and gazed at her father with a slow creeping fear taking hold of her, running chills up her arms and back.
‘What does she want?’ she cried.
‘Marriage.’ He hung his head as he said it, a man losing a battle to win a war.
‘But, Fa, I don't love him!’ she cried, her voice rising desperately. ‘Please! You can't make me marry him! I'll die if I'm stuck with him forever! No!’
‘You should have thought of that before,’ Charles said, not unkindly. ‘Oh Molly, my poor girl.’

She buried her face in her hands in despair, bit her thumb, shaking. She would not fall apart. Not now, not for this, not for him. There had to be some way. She could not stay in Dublin, stuck in Dublin for the rest of her life. She wanted to go to Vienna, or Paris or London, all the places Vince had promised her where she could play to good audiences, learn from masters. She could not stay in Dublin, married to a college don, and not even a professor at that! And Fa! what a betrayal this was! Anger rose in her like a storm. He had let her down. Again. He always took Mummy’s part in things. Couldn’t he see how Mummy hated her? How could he take the part of someone like that? Liam was right about them.

She sniffed, trying to get control of herself. Liam. He came into her mind. Liam had said she could come to him. It didn't matter where he was, if he had really gone to Australia, she would go. Anything was better than being married in Dublin. She stopped shaking slowly. Liam her salvation depended wholly on whether or not he wrote to her in the next few weeks. The parents could hardly arrange a wedding before a month's time; the banns had to be posted. She looked up at her father.
‘I'm sorry, my dear,’ he said sadly. ‘It's the only way.’ She nodded. Let him think that it was, but her heart beat It's not, it's not!
‘Go on now, before Pat comes, and tidy up.’
‘Yes, sir.’

Paddy arrived when she was in the downstairs ‘loo. Nancy put her head round the half-open door. ‘Mr. Leary’s here, Miss.’ Molly looked at her from the recesses of the towel.
‘Thank you,’ she said evenly. ‘I’ll be out directly.’ She looked at her reflection in the mirror. So much for the famous beauty; she looked and felt as old and tired as the fishmongers in Dublin. She sighed. Well, there was no point in loitering. She would have to face him sometime. He was standing in the hall before the stairs waiting for her. His hair was awry as if he had been running his hand through it, and his face was white.
‘Hello.’ He did not take his hands from his pockets.
‘Good evening,’ she returned. They might have been strangers meeting in a hotel corridor. Would that they were. She moved to open the front parlour doors, where her parents waited. The same front parlour where Liam had come in on them after the picnic in Wicklow. It was not as bad as it might have been, but Wills was fairly awful, playing the outraged brother to the hilt. He had been drinking, which might excuse some of it, but not the names he called her. It didn’t occur to her then that he might be jealous, that he was afraid of losing his best friend, too. It did now, and quelled her. Had she driven him away? For Paddy Leary! It was an awful thought.

Paddy took her arm, detaining her, and she glanced up at him wonderingly. His voice was uneven when he spoke, and his eyes like agates set in the chalk of his face.
‘Just a minute, before we go in to face the court-martial, I want to ask you: did you know the possibility of this when it occurred?’ It was a vile question. She gazed at where he held her arm and back up into his eyes in contempt.
‘If you mean did I trap you into this, the answer is no,’ she said coldly. ‘As though I would! Besides,’ she challenged, ‘would you have given over if I said it was the wrong time?’ He ran a hand through his hair.
‘Jesus, I don’t know,’ he said frankly. He gestured at the closed door. ‘What do they want?’
‘Just what you’d think.’
He gave a low whistle. ‘Are you ready for it?’
‘I’ve faced my parents before.’
‘I mean marriage to me.’

She had reached for the door, but turned again at that, shocked, her heart thudding in her ears. She could only look at him, paralysed at the thought. ‘Are you?’ she managed.
‘About as much as you are,’ he said shortly. He reached beyond her and pushed open the door. ‘Come on then, let’s get it over.’ He let her pass before him into the room.