Hungry Hill (28 page)

She was lying by the window, her face very pale and wan, but the same gentle, patient Aunt Barbara she had always been, with kind enquiries after their health, and how much she wished she could have felt up to joining them for dinner, but alas, she had not been downstairs since they were home last. She did trust, she said, that their beds were aired. The room in the tower was inclined to be damp, but of course their mother would have given orders for the linen to be warmed, which Johnnie very much doubted, but did not say so. Then she began to cough again, a distressing, tearing sound, and Henry, with his usual tact and good manners, pretended to examine a picture on the wall with great interest, while Johnnie was seized with a horrible nervous fear of laughing. Outside in the passage he collapsed, stuffing his handkerchief in his mouth, and Henry, shocked and upset, begged him to be quiet.

“How can you?” he said. “She can’t live much longer. It’s horribly sad.”

“I know that, you damned fool,” said Johnnie.

“I’m every bit as fond of Aunt Barbara as you are. But the sound of the cough…”

And once again he proceeded to rock with silent laughter, the tears running down his cheeks, until Henry too became infected, and they ran down the stairs into the garden, half hysterical, and nothing less than a cold plunge into the creek restored Johnnie, who scattered his clothes in a heap by the bank and dived in without a thought.

It was a good thing, thought Henry, that their grandfather was not returning until the next day. What would be more awful than the sudden sight of him rounding the drive and seeing Johnnie there in all his nudity? They would none of them hear the end of it until the holidays were over.

“Come out, you madman,” he called. “One of the maids from the house might see you.”

And he glanced apprehensively over his shoulder.

Johnnie shook himself like a dog, and grinned up at his younger brother. He had no towel; he must dry himself on his shirt.

“What a treat for them if they did,” he said.

“I bet that pretty one in the kitchen would like to have a look at me.”

“Conceited old idiot,” replied Henry.

“What have you got to be proud about?”

Johnnie laughed, and did not answer. He began drawing on his clothes and whistling to himself. The sullen gloom that he had Experienced coming away from Eton had gone. His mother had said he could leave at Christmas and Uncle Bob would get him a commission in the Dragoons. He would go abroad and smash a lot of people up, and poor old Henry would still be a schoolboy in tail-coat, with Lights Out at ten o’clock… .

“Just in time,” murmured Henry, as Aunt Eliza came out of the house and down the bank to greet them.

“Dear boys,” she said, giving them each in turn a rather flabby cheek, and an odour of moth-ball, “how delighted I am to see you. Darling Johnnie, such a young man, and Henry, quite a big boy too. You soon won’t want to talk to your old aunt.”

“Don’t say old,” replied Henry gallantly, “you look as young to me as ever you did.

How’s the sketching?”

“I’ve done one or two quite pretty little scenes, which I shall show you both some time. Johnnie, you would not care to go to Slane tomorrow and meet your grandfather? The steamer will not be coming for two or three days, and he has no business to keep him in Slane, apparently, so wishes to come down by road.

Tim will drive you in the carriage.”

“I don’t mind,” said Johnnie.

“I’m sure your grandfather would appreciate it.

He has not seen you for six months, you know.”

“Doesn’t he get very lonely all alone in Saunby?” said Henry, as they went into the hall.

“I can’t think what he does with himself, without the mines to watch that side of the water.”

“He goes into Bronsea twice a week still,” replied Eliza, “and over to your old home at Lletharrog now and again. It’s such a good thing Mrs.

Collins is so excellent a housekeeper, and knows how to look after him. With your aunt Barbara an invalid it would be impossible for me to be with him in either place. I seem quite tied here these days.”

“You wait until I get my commission, Aunt Eliza,” said Johnnie. “I shall invite you to London, and will spend my leave with you. Would you like me in a red coat?”

“I should indeed, Johnnie darling. All the young women would be most envious of me. Is dinner ready, Thomas ? I am famishing.”

“Mrs. John she says an hour later today, Miss Eliza; she wanted to finish some embroidery.”

“Oh dear, what a nuisance! The hours of the meals are changed every day. Yesterday when I came in from my walk the dishes were cleared away, because she took it into her head to eat earlier. I never know where I am.”

Johnnie peeped in at the library door. The room was bare and spartan, with the cold chill of a room that has not been used for many months. But his grandfather’s presence clung about it still. Even the smell was the same: leather, and pens, and paper. There was something forbidding about it, like church. What a contrast, thought Johnnie, as he ran upstairs, to the babel of the drawing-room, where Fanny-Rosa, flushed and heated, was pinning a dress pattern on to her daughter Fanny, and scolding her at the top of her voice for fidgeting, while Edward and Herbert, climbing over the furniture and locked in combat, were watched with delight and appreciation by two barking spaniels.

The following day Johnnie set out for Slane, in high humour because Tim let him drive the horses-or rather, he had commanded Tim to hand him the reins. Old Casey had been dead for some years, and the one-time groom, now a married man of nearly fifty, sat beside his young master in some trepidation.

Master Henry could be trusted with the horses. He had a natural way with animals, like his father before him, but Master Johnnie had no patience at all, and would tug at the creatures’ mouths and flick his whip so that the gentlest animal became a prey to nerves.

“Let the horse do the work, Master Johnnie, leave him alone,” said Tim, but Johnnie, who found the pace too slow, was for urging the beast onward.

“Why don’t you drive a hearse, Tim? You’d be more suited to it,” he said. “Come on, you lazy devils, you’re both so fat you can scarcely crawl, like this damned fool who looks after you.”

“And that’s no fine way to talk, Master Johnnie, to one who knew you when you were a baby.”

“Ah, you know my bark is worse than my bite, Tim. I wouldn’t hurt your feelings for the world,” said Johnnie, and he felt in his pocket for a piece of silver. “Here, you can drink perdition to me when you get to Slane.”

“I don’t like to take it, Master Johnnie.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It isn’t every day you drive me to Slane, is it? Make the best of it, while you can.”

It was fun to be all on his own in the city, with the horses and the carriage put up at the hostelry, and his grandfather, on enquiry, closeted with the manager of the bank, and likely to remain with him for two hours at least. He wandered down by the river and watched the shipping, and the sounds and the smells of Slane were good to him, because he felt well, and carefree, and was seventeen, and had money to burn in his pockets.

He rounded the corner of a street, and ran slap into two of the fellows from Doonhaven. One of them was Jack Donovan, son of Sam Donovan who kept the shop on the quayside, a tall, well-set-up young man, some half-dozen years older than Johnnie, with ginger hair and prominent blue eyes.

“Why, here’s wonders,” said Jack Donovan, “young Mr. Brodrick in person. Me and Pat was only saying to one another, it was time you were home from your fine school across the water.”

“How d’y do?” said Johnnie languidly, handing him two fingers. “Where are you fellows going?

I’m waiting for my grandfather, and have two hours to spare in which to kick my heels.”

“Ah, we’ll show you Slane,” said Jack Donovan, with a wink. “Sure, it’s a grand city when you know your way about. Let’s wet our tongues, while we think about it.”

“You’d better not be seen with us in a public-house,” said the other boy. “Maybe your grandfather will get to hear of it, and lam into you.”

“I’ll do as I damn well please,” said Johnnie. “Lead on, you two, I’m as thirsty as a tinker.”

He knew very well that if he was discovered in the company of the two fellows there would be the devil to pay, especially as one of them was a Donovan, because for some reason or other his grandfather disliked the Donovans, and so did both his aunts, and his mother too. Their dislike made him the keener to be friendly.

Soon the three boys were seated round the bar in one of the numerous “publics” in Slane. The atmosphere was stifling, and the place was crowded. There was a fair somewhere in the town, and many of the country people filled the public-house, old men telling interminable stories, shrill, arguing women, and bright-faced country girls with shawls round their heads.

“What will you have? Whisky?” asked Jack Donovan.

“Yes, if you do,” said Johnnie boldly.

At home he drank ale, when he could get it, and sometimes a meagre glass of port when his grandfather had the thought of passing the decanter.

“That’s the way of it,” said Jack Donovan in admiration, as Johnnie threw down his measure in one gulp, and tried to appear composed. “Why, you’d like another, I’ll be bound. Here, Pat, another whisky for this handsome young gentleman.”

Johnnie took his second dose more slowly.

God, it was good, though. Damn good. Put life into a fellow. And guts too. He’d be damned if he would go back to Eton next half. Uncle Bob should get him a commission right away.

“I’m joining the Dragoons in a few months,” he said, watching his two companions.

“That’s the life,” said Jack Donovan.

“Ah, you’ll look brave, Mr. Johnnie, carrying the King’s colours. Why, I declare I’ve a mind to go with you. Have another whisky?”

“I don’t mind if I do,” said Johnnie, “on condition that I pay.”

“Here’s your health, then,” said his companion, “and the best of luck to the finest young cock it’s ever been my chance to meet, and that’s God’s truth, I’ll have you know. Are you twenty-one yet?”

“Seventeen,” said Johnnie.

“Now you’re lying to me. By all the blessed saints in heaven, you are lying to me. Is he not, Pat?”

“I assure you I am not. I was seventeen in May of this year.”

“And drink whisky the way you do. That’s something to be proud of. I’d swear you were twenty-one. See that maid looking at you through the window there? She would swear you were twenty-one too, wouldn’t she, Pat?”

There was much laughter and swaying about on the stools beside the bar, and Johnnie, surprised that he could still sit straight, laughed across at the girl in the shawl, who smiled back and beckoned.

“Ah, now he’s made a conquest, now he’s lost to us,” lamented Jack Donovan, raising his eyes to heaven. “But maybe if he’s only seventeen he’d do best to leave Betty Finnigan alone. She won’t take them quite so young.”

“What do you mean?” said Johnnie.

The fellow’s laugh was suddenly becoming offensive, and he disliked his ginger hair. Perhaps, after all, his grandfather was right not to care about the Donovans. The room was getting damned hot too, and all the people making a hell of a noise.

“I bet you don’t put Betty Finnigan where she should be as quick as you knocked down those two whiskies,” said Jack Donovan, thrusting a grinning face far too close to his own.

“Oh really? What makes you think that?” said Johnnie.

“Because they don’t let you do those things at your fine school across the water,” said Jack Donovan.

“Anyone can slip a glass of whisky down his throat, but it takes a man to have a woman.”

There was another great burst of laughter, and some of the other people in the public-house turned round and stared at Johnnie.

“Have your fun, boy,” said an old fellow, waving his glass. “These young sparks are jealous of you, that’s the plain truth of it, isn’t it, Betty?”

The bright-eyed girl in the shawl nodded, and smiled again at Johnnie.

He rose slowly to his feet, and looked down at Jack Donovan.

“Thank you for your company, Jack,” he said.

“One of these days we’ll drink together again.

Meanwhile, I have another appointment.” He slammed down some silver on the bar, and put his hat on the side of his head. “Am I going your way, or are you going mine 8? he said to Betty Finnigan… .

It was five o’clock by the time Johnnie stood once more outside the bank. It was closed and barred, and the shutters drawn. His grandfather must have left fully an hour ago. Perhaps he would be waiting for him at the hostelry. Well, let the old bastard wait. It would not hurt him. Strange, thought Johnnie, how he did not feel nervous of him any more. His grandfather might look upon him with those grim, cold eyes of his, he might summon him to the bleak, cheerless study, and still he would not care. What had given him this feeling of cool confidence he could not say. Maybe it was the whisky he had taken, maybe it was the feel of the girl in his arms, maybe it was just the fact that he was seventeen, that he was Johnnie Brodrick of Clonmere, and if anyone dared to contradict him he would knock his back-teeth down his jaw, that made it impossible ever to be afraid again of an old man of seventy-five who should have been in his grave years ago.

When Johnnie came to the hostelry he found the carriage drawn up outside, and Tim standing by the horses’ heads.

His grandfather was by the open door of the carriage, his watch in his hand.

“Good afternoon, sir,” said Johnnie. “Have I kept you waiting?”

It was queer. He wondered if he had grown much during the last months, because he was now taller than his grandfather. Or was it possible that the old man had shrunk? Surely he leant more on that stick of his than he used to do? Copper John looked at his grandson, and replaced his watch in his waistcoat pocket.

“I was just about to leave Slane without you,” he said shortly, climbing into the carriage and seating himself in the far corner. “Well,” he said, after a moment, “what have you been doing with yourself?”

Johnnie took his handkerchief out of his pocket with a flourish, and blew his nose. It would be delicious, he reflected, to throw caution to the winds and tell the truth, and then watch the expression on his grandfather’s face. He fought down inside himself a wild desire to laugh.