If You Were the Only Girl, page 13
Still, this was no time to think of herself and she decided that she would bring Lucy into her rooms to talk to her in case she got upset.
Lucy did get upset when Clara told her of the letter she had received that morning, and she was also very angry. She jumped from the armchair Clara had directed her to, far too agitated to sit, and exclaimed, ‘What’s she doing marrying that man? And why are you telling me all this? Shouldn’t it be Mammy?’
‘She is writing you a letter,’ Clara said. ‘You’ll likely get it tomorrow.’
‘And you were asked to soften me up, were you?’ Lucy said disparagingly. ‘Well, that’s not going to happen when my father’s hardly cold. And he is buried here. Who is going to tend his grave with my mother in America?’
‘You know the type of man your father was, Lucy,’ Clara said. ‘Would he rather your mother suffer in poverty and deprivation, and your brothers and sister as well, or else torn from your mother altogether just so that she can tend a grave that is nothing more than buried bones?’
Lucy gasped and Clara sat her back in the chair before sitting down beside her. ‘I’m sorry if that upset you,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t my intention. But I think you have to come to terms with the fact that after all this time that is probably all that is in your father’s coffin. The essence of him has gone but it is in you and all your siblings, and memories of him will stay alive in your heart. That’s far more important than flowers on a grave.’
‘The younger ones won’t remember him. How would they?’
‘I doubt Declan will let them forget your father,’ Clara said. ‘He will be able to tell them tales of him as a boy, of them growing up together.’
‘That’s all very well,’ Lucy said truculently, ‘but it is far too soon. My father died in March 1935 and I came here just before Christmas that year and now we have had another Christmas. My mother hasn’t waited even two years.’
‘The speed of the wedding was forced on them both,’ Clara said. ‘I told you about the priest and nun visiting and what they threatened to do. And your mother didn’t go looking for anyone to take your father’s place, remember.’
‘Doesn’t Mammy mind going all the way to America?’
‘I suppose it is the lesser of two evils,’ Clara said. ‘I think she is far more frightened of the clergy, or at least the power they wield, than she is of starting again on a new continent entirely. If the priest and nun had had their way and succeeded in removing your siblings from the cottage it’s highly unlikely you or your mother would ever see or hear of them again. How d’you think your mammy would ever have been able to cope then?’
Lucy doubted that she would be able to cope at all. ‘It’s just … that man … I just can’t take to him,’ she said eventually.
Clara reached for her hand and gave it a little squeeze. ‘He isn’t the devil incarnate, Lucy, really he isn’t.’
Lucy gave a sniff and nodded.
‘And he truly loves your mother and he makes her happy … makes them all happy.’
‘I know that too,’ Lucy said brokenly.
‘Then don’t spoil it for her, Lucy,’ Clara said. ‘Put her happiness before your own because up until now she had been dealt a very bad hand in life.’
Unbidden in Lucy’s mind, pictures flashed of her mother toiling in the garden or in the house, the clothes hanging on her sparse frame, her careworn face drawn with fatigue and extreme and constant hunger. Then she contrasted this with the last time she had seen her, with the light back in her eyes and a spring in her step. Her figure was fuller and so was her face, and she was happy and humming to herself. Lucy knew, however she felt, that she could not be the one to turn that light off.
‘You’re right,’ she said to Clara. ‘Mammy has suffered enough and I will not spoil it for her, but I will not go to America with them.’
‘Lucy, if you stay behind, won’t you miss them most dreadfully?’
Lucy shrugged. ‘I missed them when I came here and I got over it,’ she said. ‘Anyway, Rory has been saying recently that the Master has a hankering to return to England in the spring and I want to go as well. I didn’t think I could because of leaving Mammy – leaving them all – but now that doesn’t matter.’
‘There you are then,’ said Clara. ‘Don’t I always say that every cloud has a silver lining?’
NINE
Lucy couldn’t understand why everyone in Windthorpe Lodge was interested in her mother getting married. She also worried that people might think it was too soon for Minnie to consider marrying again. There was no way she wanted to relate the whole incident with the priest and Clara was of like mind.
‘There is no need to go into any of that,’ she said. ‘All we say is that Declan has to return to the States, and after losing Minnie once before he has no intention of leaving her behind.’
‘Good,’ Lucy said. ‘To be honest I would be really embarrassed telling everyone what happened, and anyway, non-Catholics would probably not understand the iron grip the Church has over its parishioners and might imagine Mammy had been misbehaving in some way. I couldn’t bear them to think badly of her.’
The explanation for the hasty marriage that Clara suggested was accepted by everyone and, as far as Clodagh was concerned, that made it even more moving.
‘Oh, it’s so romantic,’ she said, as they got ready for bed that night. ‘I mean, this Declan chap carried a candle for your mother all these years. I just can’t understand, though, why you don’t want to go to America with them.’
‘I just don’t,’ Lucy said. ‘I want to make my own way in the world and go to England with the Heatheringtons. I thought you wanted that too.’
‘Um, I don’t know,’ Clodagh said. ‘I think if I was offered the chance to go to America, I’d grab it with both hands. Tell you something as well,’ she went on, ‘I might not stay in service long either when I go with the Heatheringtons to England, not if there is anything more lucrative going. I want more free time, don’t you?’
Lucy shrugged. ‘I suppose.’
‘No suppose about it,’ Clodagh said. ‘I mean, you don’t aim to be a nun, do you?’
Lucy giggled. ‘Hardly.’
‘It’s no laughing matter,’ Clodagh said. ‘If we are never let out to places where we can meet chaps, we might as well be in a convent. Course I’m not going to breathe a word of this to my parents, but there is bound to be more and different kinds of work in Birmingham. More than here, in any case.’
‘Not according to Mr Carlisle,’ Lucy said. ‘Seems England has a massive slump, the same as Ireland.’
‘Maybe,’ Clodagh conceded. ‘But I think I would like to see that for myself.’
A few days after this, Clara told Lucy that Lady Heatherington wanted to see her. She was astounded because she had not spoken to Lady Heatherington since that first day when she had started at Windthorpe Lodge.
‘Am I in trouble about something?’ she asked Clara, anxiously, as they passed through the green baize door and into the passageway leading to the main house.
‘You are not in any trouble, of any kind,’ Clara said with a smile. ‘So you can take that frown off your face. She just said she would like to talk to you about your mother’s impending marriage.’
Lucy sighed in relief and padded behind Clara without another word.
Lady Heatherington was in the library, and though she smiled, Lucy saw the sadness that lurked behind her eyes. ‘Mrs O’Leary tells me that your mother is marrying a good man, known to you,’ she said.
‘Not known to me, my lady, but known to my mother for many years,’ Lucy said. ‘He was a friend of my father’s and they grew up together. But he was in America and didn’t know of my father’s death until he came back to Ireland a couple of months ago. He knows Mrs O’ Leary too because he was also a friend of her late husband.’
‘And your mother is going back to America with him after the wedding – so we are going to lose you?’
‘Oh, no, my lady, I’m not going with them.’
‘Not going?’
‘No, my lady,’ Lucy said firmly. ‘I have never had any desire to go to America. England, however, I have always wanted to see, and Mrs O’Leary said that you are thinking of returning to your old home soon and I would like to go with you, if at all possible.’
‘Oh, it will be possible all right,’ Lady Heatherington said. ‘Cook has sung your praises very often. We will return in the springtime, and I would be quite happy to take you with us. Maxted Hall is bigger than here and we do a lot of entertaining. More staff will have to be engaged and Cook, Mrs O’Leary and Mr Carlisle will be glad to have some staff already trained.’
‘Yes, my lady.’
‘But you are sure about this decision not to go to America? You’ll not change your mind?’
‘No, my lady,’ said Lucy decisively. ‘I will not change my mind.’
Minnie was another one who couldn’t understand why Lucy was refusing such a wonderful opportunity, yet she was certain she would be able to win her round. So was Clara. She didn’t want Lucy to leave – she had become very fond of her – but she was worried that she was wasting her young life in service, when a better more fruitful one might lie across the Atlantic Ocean. She knew she would have encouraged her own daughter to go to America, even if it meant she would never see her again.
Lucy was adamant in her refusal, though. ‘I never want to be beholden to Declan. I want to make my own way.’
Clara saw Lucy’s determined face, heard the steel in her voice, and knew that Lucy had made her decision. Minnie, though, refused to accept the excuses Lucy made about not going because Lucy could hardly give her mother the reason she had told Clara. The two younger boys were also very tearful that Lucy wasn’t going to live in America with them, and Danny and Grainne lent weight to their mother’s arguments.
Grainne said it was like some great adventure that she never thought would happen to her and she couldn’t understand the point of view of anyone who thought differently.
‘It’s a new world, the Land of Opportunity,’ Danny said, as he went for a walk with Lucy to try to change her mind. ‘Why can’t you see that?’
‘Maybe I don’t want a new world,’ Lucy said. ‘I like the one I am in just fine, and, as for opportunities, I prefer to make my own and not have someone hand them to me on a plate.’
‘It isn’t like that and you know it,’ Danny protested. ‘Lucy, you’re cutting off your nose to spite your face.’
‘Maybe,’ Lucy said. ‘But it is my life and I can decide what I want to do with it.’
Minnie was surprised that not even Danny had been able to talk Lucy round and, she realised, to have the man she was beginning to love and also to give the younger children a much better life, she would have to face the prospect of losing her eldest daughter. It would break her heart but she had to accept it.
‘The door isn’t shut,’ Declan said. ‘If she should change her mind sometime in the future then we will send for her, but for now if the girl so desperately wants to stay here then that is what she must do.’
Meanwhile, the plans for the wedding went ahead. Minnie wanted a no-fuss wedding and told Declan that she would buy nice outfits for them all from Magee in Donegal Town. ‘It will be treat enough,’ Minnie assured Declan, ‘because I have never bought anything in that shop and it would be far more practical than buying special wedding clothes.’
Declan wouldn’t hear of it. ‘My darling girl,’ he said, taking hold of Minnie’s hands. ‘I have waited seventeen years to marry the girl of my dreams and we have to do the job properly.’
To please him, Minnie agreed, and a dressmaker was called. Grainne told Lucy this, for Declan had also insisted on Lucy and Grainne being bridesmaids, and Lady Heatherington was very accommodating about allowing Lucy time off for fittings and so on.
‘So what are the dresses like?’ Clodagh asked her one evening on her return from a dress fitting, just a few days before the wedding.
‘They’re midnight-blue velvet, trimmed with ivory-coloured lace,’ Lucy said, ‘with the softest little waistcoats to wear over them, in the same ivory colour as the lace, and knitted in Angora wool so they’re fluffy and warm. Declan got them from a mail-order shop in New York and he bought Grainne and me beautiful cream-coloured boots in the softest leather, silk stockings for us and Mammy, and a fringed silver cashmere shawl for Mammy to wear over her dress.’
‘And what’s her dress like?’ asked Evie.
‘Oh, there’s hardly words to describe it,’ Lucy said. ‘It’s ivory satin with a multitude of petticoats that fall in soft folds. There is lace at the neck and the hems of the petticoats, and at the cuffs of the long sleeves, and seed pearls cover the bodice. The top petticoat is lace and caught up here and fastened with little blue rosebuds, and it rustles when she moves. The veil is set on a band covered with the same rosebuds and, now that her hair is thicker than it was, it curls a bit and the veil sort of encircles her curls.’
‘Ah, it sounds lovely.’
‘It is,’ Lucy said. Her mother had tried on the whole outfit before she left that afternoon and it almost took Lucy’s breath away. She hoped Declan recognised what a lucky man he was, and she suddenly realised how much she loved her mother and how much she would miss her when she sailed for America. But, she reminded herself, it had been her choice to stay behind. ‘And you should see my brothers,’ she continued to Clodagh. ‘They all have suits, even Sam, and polished leather boots. Danny’s is different from the younger boys’ as he is going to walk Mammy down the aisle, so his is like Declan’s: a grey pinstripe, and his silk tie matches the handkerchief in his top pocket. He has a good tiepin and cuff links as well. I have never seen any of them so smart before.’
‘No expense spared, then?’
‘No,’ Lucy said. ‘Declan said he is a wealthy man and for years he has had no one to spend his money on.’
‘I suppose he has a point,’ Clodagh said.
‘Yes,’ Evie agreed. ‘After waiting so many years for your mother, he’ll want everything absolutely right.’
Lucy was given the entire weekend off for the wedding and allowed to leave on Friday evening so that she would be at home on Saturday morning to help her mother dress.
Cook had made the wedding cake, which had two tiers, and, as she packed it carefully in the basket, she said, ‘Tell your mammy to keep the top tier for the christening.’
Lucy gave a start, shocked to the core. She hadn’t thought that her mother might have another child, a half-brother or -sister she’d never know. But then, she told herself as she made for the rail bus, her mother and Declan would hardly get up to any shenanigans at their ages.
On the morning of the wedding, Lucy stayed to help her mother dress, while Grainne went to help Mrs O’Leary lay out the food for the reception in the village tavern in the main street of Mountcharles. Then they got ready themselves.
‘There is so much I want to say to you,’ Minnie said. when she and Lucy were alone. ‘And we have so little time. You are on the verge of womanhood and I always imagined I would be there by your side.’
‘I thought so, too, Mammy,’ Lucy said. ‘I will miss you so very, very much.’
‘And I you, my darling child,’ Minnie cried. ‘Oh, won’t you now, even at this late stage, change your mind and come with us?’
Part of Lucy wanted to, and she almost said she would, but then she remembered that by agreeing she was beholden to Declan and therefore under his jurisdiction, and she couldn’t bear that, especially if he started behaving like a father, ordering her about, perhaps, or arranging her life. She shook her head slowly and saw the tears glistening in her mother’s eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Mammy.’
Minnie sighed. ‘Just promise me one thing,’ she said, and without waiting for a reply went on, ‘Declan said the door is never shut and if ever you change your mind and you want to come over, he will send the tickets. You only have to write and say so. Will you promise to think about that if ever you change your mind?’
‘I will, Mammy,’ Lucy promised. It was the least she could do.
Since the altercation with the priest, they had not attended Sacred Heart church in Mountcharles but Clar Chapel, the other side of Donegal, on the way to Barnes Gap. Most people could not make that journey unless they had transport of their own so the reception was going to be held in Mountcharles. Farmer Haycock was drafted in to escort the wedding party. Declan took the boys, and Clara, so she could keep a weather eye on the younger ones, while Farmer Haycock, after delivering his own family, returned for Minnie and her bridesmaids.
When they arrived at the chapel, Danny was waiting for his mother in the porch. Lucy rearranged Minnie’s dress in the few moments before the organ began the Wedding March. Then, Danny and their mother were walking in perfect step down the aisle, with Lucy and Grainne following behind.
Lucy saw Declan at the rails with his best man, Farmer Haycock, who had been a good friend to them all, and, as Minnie drew nearer, Declan turned. The look of absolute and total love in his eyes caused a large lump to form in Lucy’s throat, which threatened to choke her. She knew whatever she felt about Declan, he loved her mother to distraction. She might be homesick for Ireland at first, but with such love surrounding her she would have a happy life, the life she deserved.
After the Nuptial Mass, they went to the reception in Mountcharles, where the company was a select one. Some people resented the Cassidys’ good fortune and others thought Minnie no better than she should be, and there had been some scathing looks and comments made in Mountcharles about her and her ‘swanky American’. None of those people were invited to celebrate with Minnie and Declan on their special day. It was a great occasion all round, and the cake was praised by one and all, though Lucy was careful not to pass on Cook’s comments about the top tier.
