Dark Rosaleen (26 page)

Cholera had spread into every filthy court and alley. There was not a poor family in the city who had not lost someone. It had been carried into Phoenix Park and an English regiment garrisoned there was now living under strict quarantine.

This was the face of Ireland's capital and it could not be shown to Her Majesty. Dublin would need to be given an emergency facelift, but, given the lack of funds, it was to be confined only to those parts the royal carriage would travel through. Every effort would be made to conceal the decay behind and beyond them. The mayor, with an eye on a baronetcy, issued his memorandum:

It would be highly expedient that such houses that have deteriorated are cleaned as the short time allows and fully furnished with window curtains, muslin blinds and flower pots. We must have people properly dressed, parading themselves. They must be impressive. It must be arranged promptly.

The Queen's route from Cork would end by train at Kingsbridge railway station. The mayor had plans for that too.

The sundry back settlements in the purlieu will not fit with the magnificent carriages provided for her. There should be a screen of boards from the first flourishing suburb at Beggar's Bush all the way to the final platform.

A great lie was being arranged, false impressions created, and false conclusions would be drawn. There was much discontent, high and low. The
Dublin Evening Mail
wrote:

Is it possible that Her Majesty could be gratified by this wretched display of wealth when thousands upon thousands of her subjects are starving? She would see a truer picture of Ireland if she was shown humanity perishing on the dung heap. She need go only a further mile beyond the places prepared for her to witness the falsehoods. If we have funds to spare, let them be spent on her starving subjects. Why should we be called upon to rejoice when gaunt famine and cold poverty reign? She is Queen of the greatest empire in the world. She is also matron to the world's biggest workhouse.

In advance of the royal visit and as a rehearsal for it, Lord Clarendon, the Lord Lieutenant, sent out invitations for a gala ball. It would be held on the first day of summer in Dublin Castle's St Patrick's Hall. Among the first to receive the gold-embossed envelope was the Commissariat General, Sir William Macaulay. His daughter was expected to accompany him.

They travelled for three days to the capital, resting for a night in Kilkenny and then again in Carlow. On the evening of the third day, their carriage entered the castle gates to the salutes of mounted Hussars lining the drive to the front steps. St Patrick's Hall smelt of new paint and beeswax. Great tapestries, borrowed from churches and noblemen, lined the walls and portraits of the Queen were spaced in exact intervals between them. Union flags were festooned across windows and draped across damp patches on the walls that could not otherwise be disguised. Five enormous crystal chandeliers were a blaze of candlelight.

Sir William and Kate were announced as the orchestra, assembled from the regiments garrisoned in the castle, began a polka. Squads of young officers in their blue, green and scarlet dress uniforms pranced with their pretty partners in a revolving swirl of bodies. Sir William retreated quickly to an alcove to smoke his cigar and sip champagne. Kate was obliged to shake many hands and curtsy to those in high office who expected no less. She was asked to dance many times and as many times refused.

She sat alone, avoided conversation and watched the polite and impeccable formality of the early evening slowly transform as the young officers, full of food and fuller still of Lord Clarendon's wine, became rowdy. Within hours, they were dancing with extravagant flourishes, exchanging banter, loud and loutish, brushing aside older men who tried to restrain them. The ball began to resemble a drunken, brawling night in the young officers' mess.

They sprawled at the tables, pouring claret down their throats and stuffing their cheeks. One held up a leg of roast rabbit to Kate. ‘Here's to your Irish, Missy Kate, for we know who you are. Your friends are rabbits. They live like them, breed like them and one shot from us and they run to their filthy burrows like a buck with a thistle up his crotch.' He banged the table. ‘They sleep with their pigs and eat with their pigs. Rabbits and pigs. Rabbits and pigs …'

Like children reciting a nursery rhyme, his fellow officers followed his chant, shouting the words faster and faster. ‘Rabbits and pigs, rabbits and pigs …'

A hand grabbed hers. ‘Now come on, young Missy Kathryn. I'll not take no for an answer. Not even if I have to carry you over my shoulder to the floor.'

He came close to her, grinning, swaying, a glass in his hand, a cheroot in his mouth. He was tall, blond and drunk. She pulled her hand away. He laughed. Red wine dribbled down his chin. It was an ugly laugh.

He grabbed at her again pulling her onto the dance floor.

‘So you are Sir William's black-haired beauty. Well, my luvvie, you may love your Irish piggies but tonight you are with me, an English officer. Come along, they're playing a polka, let's have some fun.'

She felt his body tight against her. She smelt the liquor on his breath. He held her by her wrists and swung her round wildly, once, twice, three times, to the cheers of the others watching. The music vibrated inside her, louder and louder as the drunk cavorted around her, high-stepping, twisting her arms, spinning her around. She was dizzy, ready to fall. Feeling her relax in his arms, the officer spat out his cheroot, guided her into an alcove and pushed her backwards against the wall. He forced his knee between her thighs and put his hand on her breast. His fingers fondled her nipple. Then he kissed her neck and licked her ear. She felt his hand moving up her thigh.

The shock stunned her. She felt limp. Then rage. She brought her knee up hard into his groin and felt her kneecap sink into the soft flesh of his scrotum. She pulled her nails across his face and spurts of blood dribbled onto his collar. With the howl of a child, he let go of her, spun backwards into the room holding his hands to his face and fell blindly into the orchestra. His fellow officers rushed forward but, too drunk, they tumbled among the scattered instruments.

Sir William, hidden away, settled and content with his cognac and cigars, heard nothing of it. It was Lord Clarendon, holding Kate by the wrists, her gown speckled red, who shocked him out of his reverie. Clarendon was white-faced and trembling.

‘Macaulay!' He was only feet away but he was shouting. ‘You will take this daughter of yours from my sight this instant. She has behaved wretchedly, abominably, despicably, more a market harridan than a lady of our society. She has attacked an officer on my staff, unprovoked, like an animal. She has abused my hospitality and disgraced you and your position. You will leave here immediately – immediately, I say – or I will evict you myself. Do you hear? Myself!'

She sat in the dark. The fire had died. The house was silent. The clock in the hall had chimed three times but she would not sleep tonight. This was no time for sleep.

Three days had passed since they had arrived back from Dublin but she was still re-living the blood, the commotion, the screaming, the jostling and the anger. What had they shouted? ‘Go back to the boglands. Go to your traitor, your Captain Shelley. Find the grave we put him in. Go kiss his bones and be damned!'

She knew her father could not forgive her. Three days and he had not spoken. He had locked himself in his room and only opened it to the knock of his servants. On that third evening she heard his soft padding down the stairs and into his favourite room, with the panelled beech and the view of Cork Harbour. She waited but he did not call. She went to the door, hesitated and went in.

He was in his armchair by the grate of a dying fire, in his dressing gown, with a shawl around his shoulders. He had not shaved nor combed his hair and he was barefoot. How small he looked, how gaunt and grey and shrunken, like a man crippled by life. A decanter of whiskey was on a table by his side. He held a glass, half full, in his hand.

He had been ordered back to England and he would leave in disgrace. A lifetime of endeavour, a half century of diligence and public service, annulled so swiftly, so finally, so unjustly.

Kate had wounded him but she had no way to heal him. She whispered to him but he heard only the screaming abuse of the snarling accusers and the secret revealed. His daughter conniving with the traitor shot dead for conspiring with England's enemies. Such treachery from his own flesh and blood. He who had loved her as dearly as her own mother.

‘Father,' she said. He did not turn. He would not look.

‘Father. I must tell you that …' He coughed and wiped away the spittle from the arm of the chair.

‘Do not speak to me as your father. He no longer exists. You have lost all claim to him.'

He turned to the wall. He would not look at her.

‘There is a sailing from Cork on Friday next,' he said. ‘You will be on it. You will return to Lincolnshire and stay there until you hear from my lawyers. They will arrange an annuity, enough for you to live as you please and where you please. But not with me. Never more with me. That is my contract. Take it or leave it.'

‘Father, you know nothing of that night. You do not know …'

‘I know enough to send you to prison. Enough to have you hanged.'

‘I have done nothing. You judge me without …'

‘Quiet! Silence! Do not speak. I have indeed judged you and know now what you are and why. It's your blood, your mongrel blood. This is your mother's doing.'

‘My mother is dead.'

‘Dead, yes! Your mother died because … because …'

His voice was fading. She waited, afraid of what he might say next. He sat quite still. The only sounds were his breathing and the rustle of the curtains at the open window. He looked at her directly for the first time, the anger gone. He looked captured, defeated, lost. When he spoke again it was in a whisper.

‘I sent her away. That was the sin of it. To send her off, away from me and away from you.'

Kate went down on her knees by his chair. ‘Tell me Father, tell me. I will listen.'

He spoke as if he did not want to be heard. It was his confession, the secret he had kept hidden within himself all those years.

‘I sent your mother away and you were never to know why. That was how I thought I would protect myself. To tell you would have been to lose you. Now everything is lost. I have lived with this secret all your life, a guilt eating away like a weevil gnawing at my soul. I had no right to you. You belonged to her. I denied you your mother.'

The light was leaving the room. His face was silhouetted, soft, blurred, frail. Once he had been handsome. There was a portrait of him as a young uniformed officer hanging in the hall. He had brought it from Lincolnshire. As a child she would often pretend to be a soldier and march back and forth in front of it. He had taught her how to salute.

‘Your mother was nineteen when I first met her. The most beautiful girl I had ever seen. I was in my twenties, well set up, a bull of an officer and I knew what I was worth. But I was an empty husk and she nourished me. I wasn't much of a romantic but I knew what I wanted and I wanted her. She loved me back as fiercely as any man could wish for.'

He emptied his glass and filled it again to the top.

‘But she was a Catholic. Yes! A Catholic. They say that love cannot be reasoned with and so I thought it would be with us. But it was impossible for us to marry. My family would have cut me off without a penny and I could not have remained in the regiment. How could we have managed? But she loved me and to marry me she had to renounce her faith. Can you imagine what that meant to her? I knew nothing then of her Church, nothing of its superstitions and the way it holds a person prisoner. I did not know that what she had promised me was not in her power to fulfil.

‘So we were married in the Church of England and were blissfully content. We travelled together to most corners of the Empire and no mention was made of it again. Within two years she was heavy with you, and it was then that I began to lose her. I would find her fretting and weeping, talking to herself, and I could find no way to comfort her. When you were born she did not hold you or look at you. It was as if you did not belong to her. So you were weaned by another. You were never wanting of love and care, I can vouch for that. But it was not from her. Never from her.'

He was silent again. He turned his head, resting the tumbler of whiskey on his knee. He looked down at it, the glow from the fire's embers reflecting the gold of it on his face. It was as if he was looking into a crystal ball, waiting for the images of his past to show themselves. Kate wanted to touch him, to comfort, to give him strength. But she could not. He was elsewhere and she was not with him. She leant nearer as he began again.

‘She started riding out on her own and would not tell me why. I waited some time, some weeks I think, until I was curious, perhaps even jealous and one day I followed. She made no attempt to hide her tracks. She never looked back. There was no cunning. She rode some miles beyond our village, somewhere I'd never been before and stopped at a church. For a long time she stood between the gravestones and I wondered if she had a relation buried there, one she had not talked of to me. Or perhaps she had come to find a little peace, to be alone, away from me, away from everything. I could understand that. Then, just as I was about to turn to my horse, I saw him. I could see her plainly but his back was to me. She was pleading. I could see the anguish in her face and I saw him shake his head. She was on her knees, crying. I was in a rage. Had I brought my gun I would have shot them both, then and there, without hesitation. Deceived, I thought, cuckolded by the only one I had ever loved. How God must have struggled to hold me back and I've thanked him ever since that He did. For as the man turned I saw his face. She was kneeling before him, he touched her head and crossed himself. He was a priest.