The Made Marriage Page 3

  Kate’s departure had, in the end, been rather hurried: in fact, with characteristic impulsiveness, she had set off on the very day Owen’s letter had arrived announcing that his aunt was now at Laragh. It would mean that her arrival would take him rather by surprise, but there would be no doubt about the warmth of the welcome awaiting her—he had made that plain in his last letter. She had scribbled a short hasty note telling him of her departure, but it was extremely unlikely this would reach him before she appeared in person.

  It was soon after passing through acres of apparently limitless bogland that the train drew up at a small station. Kate stood up, and poked her head through the window: no one evidently was disembarking, but as the train was about to depart, a young woman hurried on to the platform. She looked uncertainly at the closed carriage doors and hesitated, as though resigning herself to being left behind. It was obvious that action would have to be taken before the train eased out of the station and, typically, Kate immediately involved herself.

  Flinging open the door of her carriage, she beckoned excitedly to the young woman, who ran towards her and jumped in, subsiding breathlessly on the opposite seat.

  ‘A near shave, was it not?’ she exclaimed. ‘If it had not been that I saw you semaphoring I should have had to wait for the next train, for I do not trust myself to Nicky Fitzpatrick’s driving.’

  Without vouchsafing any further explanation the girl opened a dun-coloured vanity box and began expertly to make up her face.

  Now that she had time to consider her companion closely, Kate noticed that she was extraordinarily pretty and that while she spoke English perfectly she did so in a stilted manner that made her sound ‘foreign’.

  She seemed completely unaware of Kate’s interested scrutiny and when she had touched up her face to her satisfaction returned the tiny plastic bottles to their compartments and snapped shut the lid of her case. ‘I’m going shopping in Limerick,’ she observed at last. ‘One becomes so bored by the rural life, and Ballyfeeny is not an interesting place.’

  She did not seem to feel that there was any necessity to elaborate on this: it was as though, completely wrapped up in her own affairs, she found it incomprehensible that her listener should not be fully aware of what she was talking about.

  ‘The Fitzpatricks are the most important people in Ballyfeeny,’ she informed Kate when she revealed that the name was unknown to her. ‘They own the local woollen mills and are a very old family. They can trace their ancestry back to Norman days.’ She sounded casual, but Kate noticed that the girl’s small perfect features had taken on a look of shrewdness. ‘You are not Irish, are you?’ she asked.

  Kate shook her head. ‘I’m from England. I’m here only for a—a short holiday,’ she said cautiously.

  The girl smiled, showing tiny teeth as rounded and white as a baby’s. ‘That is how it is with me too. I am here what you call au pair to perfect my English. I like being with the Fitzpatricks: their mother is a lady of quality and the boys are amusing—especially Nicky—but one grows bored with the country at times. By the way, my name is Doretta Denzzani,’ she added, and waited with an air of interest for Kate to reciprocate.

  Kate hesitated; She had an. uneasy feeling that by disclosing her name she might also divulge information she was loath to impart: she had an almost morbid fear that the girl opposite, so poised and exquisitely groomed, might break into derisive laughter should she guess the true reason for her journey to Ireland.

  As Doretta raised arched eyebrows in polite enquiry, Kate swallowed and said quickly, ‘I—I’m Kate Norbert and I’ve come on a holiday to Tipperary. It’s my first visit to Ireland.’

  It was at this point that Bedsocks awoke and gave a plaintive mew.

  Doretta, who obviously until that moment had not noticed the basket, gave a startled glance in its direction. ‘What was that noise?’ she asked apprehensively.

  ‘It’s Bedsocks,’ Kate told her.

  ‘Bedsocks?’ Doretta echoed.

  ‘She’s my cat, and I brought her with me, otherwise she might pine,’ Kate explained with due seriousness.

  ‘You mean you brought your cat with you from England?’ Doretta sounded incredulous. ‘I do not like animals much, although I have two poodles at home, but they’re only a responsibility and I should never, never take them with me on a journey.’

  ‘But Bedsocks isn’t an ordinary pet,’ Kate pursued. ‘She’s terribly affectionate and seems to know everything you’re saying.’

  ‘People say that sort of thing about animals. Personally, I don’t believe it,’ Doretta replied decisively.

  The train had begun to slow down and Kate’s companion glanced through the window. ‘We are now at Killmageary,’ she announced, and looked up in surprise as Kate sprang to her feet in excitement.

  ‘Killmageary! But that’s my stop. This is where I get off.’ She reached up to the rack above the seat and pulled down her rather battered suitcase.

  Doretta’s eyes widened as she glanced at the label. ‘Laragh, Killmageary,’ she repeated. ‘So you are going to stay with Owen Lawlor?’ She sounded shocked and incredulous, but Kate, engrossed with the difficulties of disembarking with her case and Bedsocks’s basket, had no time to interest herself in her companion’s reactions.

  As she stood on the platform while the train drew out, she had the vague impression that Doretta Denzzani was watching her from the carriage window, in her eyes a look of sharp suspicion.

  Kate glanced around the station. A bed of golden-hearted narcissi tossed their china-white petals in the bracing spring air. The tiny ticket-office was deserted and the only sign of life was an old man with a jaunting-car in the station yard, who was regarding her small figure with dissatisfaction.

  He had posted himself outside the station in the forlorn hope that an opulent passenger might alight from the Dublin train. But all that had emerged was the small figure with the shabby suitcase and lost air, not at all the kind of person who would consider it a privilege to pay handsomely for the novelty of riding on a genuine Irish side-car.

  As Kate advanced towards him he had been on the point of turning his ancient horse’s head and setting out for home, as another train was not due for several hours. He scratched his chin thoughtfully as Kate gazed up at him and asked doubtfully, ‘I suppose Mr. Lawlor didn’t send you for me?’

  ‘Owen Lawlor?’ he replied in bewilderment. ‘Now why should Mr. Owen do such a thing?’

  ‘I mean Owen Lawlor of Laragh,’ Kate told him hopefully.

  ‘There’s no need to tell me Owen Lawlor lives at Laragh,’ he snorted. ‘Hasn’t there been a Lawlor at Laragh for the last two hundred years? Why, I worked for old Terence Lawlor when I was no more than a gossoon, and a nicer-spoken gentleman you wouldn’t find in the whole length and breadth of County Tipperary.’ The old man paused and gazed out glumly between the horse’s dusty ears. ‘Though I can’t say the same for the present one! He has great notions of himself, has Master Owen, and can be mighty haughty when he has a mind to.’

  ‘Oh!’ Kate felt her heart sink. There was no possible similarity between a haughty gentleman with notions of himself and the gay light-hearted Owen Lawlor who had courted her so assiduously in his letters.

  ‘I was thinking maybe it was the Fitzpatricks of Ballyfeeny you were looking for. Them au pair girls, as they call them, are always coming and going—more going than coming, you might say.’ He cackled delightedly at his witticism. ‘They’re a terrible wild lot are the Fitzpatricks, and if you was one of them au pair girls from foreign parts you’d be wise to turn round and go straight back where you came from.’

  ‘But it’s not the Fitzpatricks I’m looking for,’ Kate said desperately. ‘It’s Owen Lawlor of Laragh.’

  ‘There’s no doubt but that Mr. Owen lives at Laragh,’ the old man conceded, ‘but it still doesn’t make sense that a young girl like yourself should be gallivanting out there by herself; and it’s no way right, him being a bachelor.’

>   Kate, not being prepared to discuss the presence of Aunt Florrie as Chaperon, said nothing.

  ‘So he hasn’t come to meet you, is that it?’ the old man asked shrewdly.

  ‘I—I don’t think my letter can have reached him in time,’ Kate said defensively.

  ‘And no doubt you don’t fancy sleeping on the platform,’ he said slyly. It was dear that he was now regarding her as a potential customer and looked on it as a good bit of business to paint as gloomy a picture as possible.

  Kate found her natural buoyancy deserting her. Once the old man had departed she would be alone in the deserted station. It was easy enough too to picture those meandering chalk-white roads deserted and moonlit and herself trudging along carrying an equally bewildered Bedsocks. Yet her future had seemed so dearly marked out by Owen’s letters, especially the last one, in which he had said he was looking forward eagerly to her arrival. There was nothing at all to fear, She told herself, and for a moment longed to flaunt some of Owen’s letters in the face of the obstructive old jarvey—but they were much too precious and intimate to show to other eyes.

  The old jarvey took out his handkerchief and buffeted his nose crossly. The grey eyes that looked up at him so hopefully were painfully like those of his favourite granddaughter, young Noreen, who had taken the boat to England one day and from then on had studiously ignored her family. ‘You wouldn’t by any chance have come across a young one by the name of Noreen Fogarty while you were on the other side?’ he inquired hopefully.

  ‘The other side?’ Kate repeated, completely at a loss.

  The old man twitched his nose angrily. ‘Across the water, of course.’

  Comprehension dawned. ‘Oh, you mean England,’ Kate inquired brightly.

  ‘Where else?’ he growled.

  Kate shook her head slowly. ‘England’s quite big, you know, and there are so many people.’

  The old man nodded resignedly and his thin stork-like neck seemed to recede into has green-tinged coat. ‘So they say,’ he remarked without conviction, and then sawed on the reins as a hint that he was about to ease his nag out of the station yard.

  As his horse raised its head and began to amble away Kate again felt that tiny clutching hand of fear. ‘Perhaps you pass near Laragh,’ she called as she hurried after him. She hadn’t much money and she shrewdly suspected that he was both mean and avaricious.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ the jarvey said grudgingly. ‘Peggy here and myself are on our way home: we’ll be passing the side gate of Laragh. We could drop you off there and no doubt you can find your way up to the house through the orchard.’

  Gratefully she piled her cases and Bedsocks’s basket on to one side of the jaunting-car and climbed up beside them. She clung with both hands on to the central brass rail as the old mare broke into an ambling trot as soon as they were dear of the station yard.

  ‘Old Peggy knows she’s going home,’ her owner grunted complacently. ‘She can put on a rare turn of speed when she knows there will be a hot mash waiting at home.’ And I’m going home too, perhaps, Kate thought with a little thrill of happiness, to a home she had never seen and a man she had never met. It might of course sound odd to those who didn’t understand the full story, but somehow the situation had arisen so simply and naturally that there seemed to be nothing at all strange about the fact that she had not yet laid eyes on her future bridegroom.

  As the jaunting-car bumped and swayed over the flinty roads past hedges in bloom with the tiny delicate flower of the blackthorn, Kate held on to her perch with both hands and Bedsocks lost her natural placidity and keened dolefully from the depths of her basket.

  A little past the cross roads the old man turned down a narrow winding lane. Primroses grew thickly on the grass-topped double ditches and Kate felt gathering excitement as the jarvey drew Peggy to a stop outside a small green gate set into a high wall. ‘This be the side gate to Laragh,’ he explained. ‘If you go direct through the orchard you’ll come to the house.’

  Gratefully Kate scrambled down and when she had paid him, picked up her case in one hand and Bedsocks’s basket in the other, crossed the road and pushed open the gate. It was only after she had disappeared from sight that the jarvey reluctantly pulled on the reins and departed home.

  Kate advanced on the short green turf between the low branches of old apple trees. Against the high brick walls grew espaliered pears and cherries and further on grew rows of raspberry canes and black and white currant bushes. More and more puzzled both by the size of the orchard and the fact that no whitewashed thatched cottage was in sight, she decided the jarvey had accidentally or by design brought her to the wrong place. Cautiously she picked her way through prickly gooseberry bushes until she saw a tall iron-work gate set into the wall. Through it she caught a glimpse of a wide cobbled yard and what appeared to be the kitchens and outhouses of a large sprawling farmhouse.

  Before she had time to take stock of her surroundings a piglet wriggled its pink body through the railings and charged blindly into the orchard. It had almost dashed into her before frantically and with a loud piercing scream it changed course and Kate, jumping to one side in an effort to avoid it, tripped and fell headlong into a bed of young green plants. Her suitcase flew in one direction, Bedsocks’s basket in another, and as the lid burst open the little cat darted out, her hair bristling, and scrambled up to the top of a tall pear tree.

  For a moment Kate lay breathless and winded before getting to her feet. She searched about for her handbag and when she had found it in the heart of a blackcurrant bush retrieved her suitcase. She was removing earth from her coat before trying to inveigle Bedsocks down from her perch when she became aware that a tall rather thick-set young man was regarding her from the now open iron gate. His expression was anything but amiable and Kate, bruised and shaken, forced an ingratiating smile. This, no doubt was the owner of the rather imposing house and the sooner she explained about the jarvey’s mistake, gathered her possessions together and departed, the better!

  She waited a little apprehensively as he advanced towards her and as he drew near she saw that his hair was very black and straight and his features strong but irregular.

  He glanced in a marked manner at the indentation her fall had made in the bed of plants. ‘And just what are you doing on my property?’ he asked abruptly.

  ‘It was the jarvey with the sidecar,’ Kate began reasonably. ‘He drove me from the station, but he must have made a mistake. You see, I asked to be taken to Laragh and—’

  ‘Just a minute, let’s get this straight.’ He sounded anything but conciliatory. ‘I assume you mean by “the jarvey”, Ned Fogarty, who’s an idle old rogue who has never done an honest day’s work in his life.’

  Kate blinked at the acidity of his tones. ‘Well, I thought he was very nice,’ she said defensively.

  ‘I’m not interested in your opinion, young woman, and you still haven’t explained what you’re doing in my orchard.’

  ‘But I was trying to explain. You see, the jarvey, I mean, Ned Fogarty, evidently made a mistake. I asked him to take me to Owen Lawlor’s cottage, and he took me here instead.’

  There was a short pause after this statement and Kate had time to note that his short broad fingers looked hard-worked and earth-stained and that the wide cheekbones were weather-tanned.

  ‘And did you specifically ask for a cottage?’ he asked finally.

  Kate wrinkled her brows thoughtfully. ‘No, now that you mention it, I didn’t actually ask for Owen Lawlor’s cottage. I think I said Laragh, but that’s what it’s called, isn’t it?’

  ‘Then, as far as that goes, Mick made no mistake, which would have been extremely strange anyway, considering that, as a young man, he was employed here by my father.’

  Kate gazed about with bewilderment. ‘But this isn’t a small farmhouse: there are no mountains, or—or lambs,’ she ended weakly. The well-stocked orchard and imposing buildings filled her with acute disappointment, and O
wen Lawlor too was so very different from her gay teasing correspondent.

  He looked grim and unsympathetic, and her reference to lambs seemed to mark the end of his patience. ‘Look, Miss Whoever-you-are, I haven’t the remotest idea what you’re talking about. I’m Owen Lawlor, and we’ve never had lambs here—or sheep for that matter. It’s nearly all pasture and dairy-farming in this part of the country, and now that you’ve wrought havoc amongst my cabbage plants I’d be obliged if you’d take yourself and your suitcase and dear off. I’m a busy man and I’ve no time for idiotic young women.’

  Kate nodded miserably. ‘Now I’ve seen Laragh I realise it would never have worked out. But I can’t understand how you could have been so cruel as to bring me all this way under false pretences, for you don’t really want a wife, do you?’

  Again there was an uncomfortable pause, but the expression of the raw-boned man had subtly changed. She detected a look of alertness in the dark hazel eyes.

  ‘Just what are you talking about?’ he asked sharply.

  ‘You needn’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about,’ Kate returned indignantly. ‘Why, I’ve a whole bundle of your letters in my bag.’ She scrabbled in her handbag and produced the tiny limp advertisement she had culled from the newspaper and a packet of letters. ‘This is your advertisement, and these are the last letters you sent me.’ Then as she remembered the warm welcoming words, she felt such bitter disappointment at the reality that tears spilled down her cheeks.

  He glanced at her briefly. ‘There’s no necessity to display emotion for my benefit. I’m not the type of man who’s moved by tears.’

  ‘But I’m not trying to—to move you,’ Kate sniffed. ‘It’s just that I’m remembering your last letter. You sounded so kind and considerate and you’re not really: you’re cold and rude and hard and—’ To her dismay she burst into loud sobs.

  Owen Lawlor, however, was unaware of her misery. He was glancing with incredulous eyes through some of the green-tinted sheets of letter paper that were folded and worn with many readings. So Nicky was up to his old tricks! But this time it was something more than one of his usual immature pranks: it had landed him with a small round-faced girl with dark golden hair and enormous grey eyes, not to speak of the extraordinary-looking cat at the top of the pear-tree.