The Girl on the Cliff (36 page)

Joe did so as Lily walked down the bank to find an easy place to enter the river. Pulling off her dress, she plunged into the icy water. Kathleen glanced from Joe to Gerald, watching two sets of male eyes pinned to Lily as she swam.

‘I must admit,’ said Gerald, after they’d eaten their picnic, ‘this part of the world is rather beautiful when the sun shines on it. Pity your mother isn’t here more often to enjoy it, Lil. Where is she at the moment, by the way?’

‘Oh, in London, you know how she hates the country,’ replied Lily casually.

‘I’m amazed Pa puts up with it. Having an errant wife must be awfully hard,’ said Gerald.

‘You know Mummy; she’s a bird of paradise and needs to be free,’ Lily said equably. ‘She’ll fly home when she’s ready.’

‘Whenever that may be,’ Gerald muttered under his breath. ‘Well, I won’t be around much in the future, I’m off to Sandhurst to learn how to be an army officer,’ he announced, glancing at Joe and Kathleen. ‘I envy you two in some ways. Everything the same, day after day; counting the sheep, milking the cows …’

‘I’d say ’twas more to our life than that,’ Kathleen said defensively, loathing the way he constantly patronised them.

‘And what about his?’ Gerald indicated Joe.

‘Joe’s happy. Aren’t you, Joe?’ Kathleen said softly.

‘Am,’ Joe nodded. ‘Love Lily. Lily fine, Joe fine.’

‘Really?’ Gerald raised an eyebrow. ‘“Love” is it? Do you think that one day Lil’ll marry you, Joe?’

‘Yes. Marry Lily. Look after her.’

‘Goodness!’ Gerald laughed. ‘Did you hear that, Lil? Joe thinks you’re going to marry him.’

‘Don’t tease him, Gerald, he doesn’t understand,’ countered Lily.

‘Well, he will soon, when you’re packed off to boarding school in a few weeks’ time and you’re no longer here.’

Lily pulled her knees up to her chest. ‘They can’t make me go if I don’t want to, Joe. And I don’t want to, so there,’ Lily pouted.

Kathleen glanced at Joe’s face, which had horror written all over it.

‘Lily go?’ he asked slowly.

Lily stood up, walked to Joe and sat beside him, patting his hand. ‘Don’t worry, Joe, I promise I won’t be leaving here, whatever Mother and Father say.’

‘I doubt you have any choice, little sister,’ said Gerald.

‘Lily stay.’ Joe glanced at Gerald and put a protective arm around Lily’s shoulders.

‘You see?’ Lily smiled. ‘Joe won’t let me go, will you?’

‘No.’ Joe stood up suddenly and walked towards Gerald, bearing down on him. ‘Lily stay here.’

‘There’s no need to get in a bate, Joe, it’s the parents that are in charge, not me. Although I’d say that for Lil’s sake, it’s about time she learned a few more manners and how to be more ladylike.’

‘Lily
lady
!’ The punch was thrown by Joe in a second, striking Gerald squarely on the jaw.

Gerald was knocked back by the force of the blow. ‘I say! No need for that, old chap!’

Kathleen felt paralysed, stunned by Joe’s aggressive reaction. Never had she seen him lash out with violence before. And he could not have inflicted his uncharacteristic behaviour on to a more malicious victim.

‘Joe!’ She came to her senses. ‘Now you apologise immediately to Gerald for punching him. Sure, Gerald, he didn’t mean it, he’s just very protective of his Lily.’ Kathleen tugged at Joe’s arm. ‘Come on, say sorry, Joe.’

Joe looked at his feet, took a deep breath and said, ‘Sorry.’

‘Well, no harm done, eh?’ Gerald stood up, brushing himself down, and turned to Lily. ‘Taken worse punches than that in my time and lived to tell the tale.’

Kathleen could see his ego was more bruised than his jaw. Especially in front of Lily.

‘Well, let’s be hoping we can forget all about it and not let it spoil the rest of the day,’ Kathleen said desperately.

‘Of course,’ said Gerald. ‘Let’s forget it. Shake, Joe?’

Reluctantly, Joe offered his hand.

‘There, all forgotten,’ said Gerald.

Somehow, Kathleen knew Gerald Lisle would neither forgive nor forget.

The summer wore on and Joe and Kathleen saw less of Lily than they normally would. Joe spent hours staring out of his bedroom window at the lane, waiting for Lily to appear. When she did, she seemed distracted, different
somehow. Kathleen thought that perhaps it was the looming spectre of boarding school in her thoughts.

‘I shan’t stay if I don’t like it, you know,’ Lily said to Kathleen and Joe one hot August night as they strolled along the cliff path. ‘I shall simply run away.’

‘Ah, now, I’m sure ’twill be better than you think, Lily.’ Kathleen looked at Joe’s sad, earnest face. ‘And remember, you’ll be back for the Christmas holidays in the blink of an eye. Won’t she, Joe?’

‘Lily stay. Lily stay here.’

‘I promise I’ll be back, Joe.’ Lily threw her arms around Joe’s shoulders. ‘But I have to leave for London in a week’s time to buy all my clothes for school. Mummy’s arriving here to take me to England. Father’s all of a quiver because he knows she’s coming.’ Lily raised her eyebrows. ‘Honestly, I don’t know how he puts up with her. She plays that rotten ballet music over and over again in the house. It’s so depressing. I can’t understand why anyone enjoys watching lots of people standing on one leg and not saying a word for a whole two hours! It’s so boring.’

Kathleen had heard her mother saying that Lily had an aversion to ballet because it represented the passion that was the centre of her mother’s world, and took her away from her daughter. She, however, was inclined to agree with Lily. Having been taken by her aunt to see a ballet in Dublin once, she’d fallen asleep halfway through.

‘Now, I must dash. Gerald’s teaching me to play bridge. And I’m getting to be rather an expert.’ Lily kissed both Joe and Kathleen and skipped off in the direction of Dunworley House.

Joe watched her until she was a mere dot in the distance. Then he sat down heavily and stared out to sea. Kathleen knelt next to him, putting her arm around his broad shoulders.

‘She will be back, Joe, you know she will, so.’

Tears appeared in Joe’s eyes. ‘Love her, Kathleen. Love her.’

Kathleen always knew when Aunt Anna had come down to visit as soon as she entered their farmhouse. The pungent smell of perfume and cigarette smoke drifted into the kitchen from the sitting room. And she could hear her aunt’s throaty laugh and the tinkle of china cups – only ever brought out of the cabinet by her mother when Aunt Anna graced them with her presence.

‘Kathleen, my darling! How are you, p-precious?’ Aunt Anna said as Kathleen bent to kiss her. ‘My,’ she cast an appraising eye over her niece, ‘you’ve filled out since I last saw you.’

‘Thank you,’ said Kathleen automatically, not at all sure it was a compliment.

‘Come,’ Aunt Anna patted the seat next to her on the sofa, ‘sit down and tell me what you’ve b-been up to.’

Kathleen sat, feeling – as she always did – like a carthorse next to the whisper-thin elegance of her aunt. Aunt Anna’s jet-black hair, which her mammy said came out of a bottle, was held sleekly in a coil at the nape of her neck. Her huge eyes were rimmed with kohl, her lips a fiery red. Which, set against the backdrop of her perfect white skin, gave her a dramatic and arresting look.

As usual, Kathleen was tongue-tied by the sheer
presence of the woman she knew was world famous in the ballet community. The contrast between the sisters, who may not have been connected by blood – her mammy had told her Anna had been adopted by her parents – but had grown up together in the same household nevertheless, could not have been greater. Sitting in this small room, filled with drab, dark furniture, Aunt Anna looked like an exotic bloom growing by mistake in an Irish bog.

‘So come now, Kathleen, talk to your aunt and tell her all your news,’ Anna encouraged.

‘I …’ Kathleen’s mind was a blank; she could not think of one thing she could possibly say that would be interesting to someone like her aunt. ‘Well … I’ve had the holidays, and I go back to school in a week’s time,’ Kathleen managed.

‘Any thoughts on a future c-career yet?’ Anna probed.

Kathleen hadn’t a clue in her head. To say she wanted to be a wife and mother and not much more seemed the wrong answer to give. ‘I don’t know, Aunt.’

‘And how about boys?’ Anna nudged her conspiratorially. ‘Surely there must be some young man beating a p-path to your door?’

Kathleen thought of the young man she’d met recently from Skibbereen, at a local hop. John Ryan had danced with her four times and they’d worked out that they were distantly related through her grandmother, Coleen Ryan. But then, around these parts, everybody was related somehow.

‘I can see there’s someone, my d-darling. You’re blushing!’

‘Really, Kathleen?’ said her mother from the armchair
opposite her. ‘You have a young man, do you? Well, she’s never mentioned anything to me about it, Anna.’

‘Well, all girls like to have their secrets. Don’t they, Kathleen?’ Aunt Anna smiled.

‘I’ve no secrets,’ she faltered, but could feel herself blushing.

‘There’s nothing wrong with a few secrets anyway, is there, Sophia?’ smiled Aunt Anna. ‘I’m sure your mother has t-told you, Kathleen, that in order to keep me safe, Mary, my adoptive mother, told Lawrence Lisle, my guardian, that I’d died at boarding school of influenza! Can you imagine it?’ Anna gave her signature throaty laugh. ‘And then I t-turned up in Ireland as bold as brass, and married the brother of a man who’d been told I was dead years before. Now that’s what I call k-keeping a secret.’

‘Personally, Anna, I don’t think it’s a laughing matter.’ Sophia’s eyes were full of thunder. ‘You know as well as I do that our mother did everything she could to protect you and keep you safe. Through great cost to herself, I might add. She could have ended up in prison.’

‘I know all that, little sister, and I’m awfully g-grateful to her for doing it. You know I am.’

‘That’s why you didn’t talk to her for fifteen years, and broke her heart, is it?’ countered Sophia.

As she sat between them, Kathleen wished the ground would swallow her up.

‘Honestly, Sophia! Please don’t lecture me.’ Anna rolled her eyes. ‘All I did was what any normal young girl would d-do, and flew the nest. Please remember, at the time I had no idea of what Mary had done to help me. I can’t be
held responsible for that, can I? Now then, let’s move on to the future. You know I’m t-taking Lily to London next week to fit her out for boarding school?’

‘Yes, I do.’

Kathleen watched her mother struggle to compose herself and realised there was a lot she still didn’t know about the history between the two sisters.

‘I just can’t believe that I’ve got to leave on Monday,’ Lily sighed as she and Kathleen lay on the sand gazing up at the stars. ‘How can I live without
this
? All the space and freedom … the smell of the sea that comes through my bedroom window on the breeze in the morning … the storms that hurl the waves so angrily against the cliffs. And most of all,’ Lily sighed heavily, ‘no people. I’m not sure I like people. Do you, Kathleen?’

Kathleen was used to Lily’s bizarre thoughts. ‘Well now, I can’t say I’ve ever thought about whether I liked people or not. They’re sort of
there
, aren’t they? You have to live with them, don’t you?’

‘But can you imagine sharing your bedroom with seven strangers? That’s what I’ll be doing in a week’s time. I don’t think you even get to have a wash privately. Oh, Kathleen, can you imagine?’

To be fair, Kathleen could not. It suddenly made her own life seem very comfortable. She didn’t understand why a girl who had been brought up to be as privileged as Lily was going to be taken and put into an establishment that, from what Lily described, was little better than what she had read of in Charles Dickens’s
Oliver Twist
.

‘Anyway,’ continued Lily, ‘as I said to you before, if I
don’t like it, I’ll run away. I’ve stolen some money from Daddy to make sure I have enough to pay my fare back to Ireland. And, if needs be, I can sleep in one of your barns and you can bring me food.’

‘Ah now, Lily,’ Kathleen comforted, ‘it’s got to be better than that. You said there are lots of well-to-do families sending their girls to the school you’re going to. You’ll make lots of friends, to be sure.’

‘But I
hate
rules, Kathleen. You know I do,’ Lily moaned. ‘I’m not good at them, really I’m not.’

Kathleen wondered to herself whether this was because Lily didn’t have many rules to begin with, or if it was simply her personality. Sophia always called her niece a free spirit and Kathleen supposed that was what she was.

‘I’m sure it won’t be as bad as you’re thinking it will be. It’s the thing young ladies have to do, isn’t it?’

‘Gerald says he loved Eton,’ sighed Lily. She turned suddenly on her front and put her elbows beneath her cheeks, gazing up at Kathleen. ‘I actually think Gerald’s rather handsome now, don’t you?’

‘He wouldn’t be my type,’ answered Kathleen, physically shuddering at the thought.

‘Well, he’s definitely improved from the arrogant, spotty toe rag he used to be. By the way, he suggested that on my last night in Ireland, the four of us come down to the beach in the evening, build a fire and have a picnic as a sort of celebration goodbye to me. Are you on, Kathleen? You and Joe?’

‘I am, to be sure, but as for Joe …’ Kathleen sighed. ‘I wouldn’t have thought Gerald wanted him anywhere near him.’

‘Oh, Gerald’s forgotten all about that.’ Lily flicked Kathleen’s worry away with a wave of her hand. ‘Just tell Joe I’ll be there and I’m sure he’ll want to come along. It wouldn’t be the same without him, would it?’

‘No,’ Kathleen agreed, ‘it wouldn’t.’

Sure enough, Joe’s face lit up at the thought of an evening on the beach with Lily. Even if it did mean they had to tolerate Ghastly Gerald. As the sky became laden with the weight of night, Kathleen and Joe walked down to the cove.

‘Now, Joe, remember, ’tis Lily’s last night and a party. Whatever that Gerald says to you, promise me you won’t let him rile you?’

‘No, Kathleen.’

‘You promise, Joe?’

Joe nodded. ‘Promise. Have something. For Lily.’ Out of his pocket, Joe produced a tiny, exquisitely carved angel. ‘Lily is Angel,’ he stated.