Some Old Lover's Ghost (19 page)

Daragh was now a married man. They would be friends. Tilda pushed open the bedroom door. He was standing at the window. When he turned to her she knew, in one small, crushing moment, that they could never be friends. That his presence allowed her at the most only the pretence of composure.

Yet she went to him, smiling, and kissed his cheek. ‘Daragh. How lovely to see you. Are you well?’

‘I’m fine. And you look marvellous, Tilda.’

She wondered whether he, too, pretended. Or whether the acquisition of Southam Hall had deadened his capacity for passion. She said smoothly, ‘And Jossy and Caitlin? Are they well?’

‘They’re both grand. Tilda, I’m in London for a while. I thought I’d look up some old friends. Are you free tonight?’

‘It’s not a good time for me, Daragh.’ Her voice shook a little, betraying her.

‘Tomorrow, then.’

‘I’ve an engagement, I’m afraid. I’m learning German. It helps me with my work.’

He fell silent. She moved around the room, tidying shelves, straightening the bedspread. ‘We’ve a busy week, haven’t we, Em?’

‘Just a hectic social whirl.’ Emily smiled brightly.

He just stood there, watching her. When Tilda took off her hat and slid her hands from her gloves, she felt as though she was naked. Her skin burned. He said suddenly, ‘If you should change your mind … I’m staying in the Savoy Hotel.’ Then he smiled, and left the room.

She went to the window and watched him walk up the street, his hands in his pockets. She guessed that he was whistling – ‘Galway Bay’, or ‘The Star of the County Down’. Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back.

‘The Savoy,’ said Emily enviously. ‘Lucky him. Better than this dump. You won’t go, will you?’ She glanced at Tilda. ‘Tilda, he’s
married
, for heaven’s sake.’

Daragh was tenacious and he had a streak of self-interest that Sarah Greenlees had taken advantage of. Tilda imagined him sitting in his room in the Savoy, waiting for her day after day. Or she might come home from work and find him on the doorstep of 15 Pargeter Street. She imagined the letters that he might send, the telephone calls that he might make when he discovered where she worked. She wondered how long it would be before her will dissolved, before she let him take what he wanted. There was a way, she thought, of sending him away for ever. Daragh, after all, did not know everything.

‘I might go.’

Emily closed the door. ‘And what about Max?’ she hissed. ‘You know that he is in love with you. They are all in love with you, of course – Michael, Fergus, Stefan – which is an absolute bore for me, but Max is different. You know that, Tilda. You shouldn’t flirt with someone like Max.’

She said calmly, ‘I never flirt.’

‘No. You don’t have to, do you?’ Emily scrabbled in
her bag for cigarettes. ‘Tilda, stop being so bloody …
unreachable
.’

Tilda took her knitting from the drawer and sat on the end of the bed, picking up stitches. The yarn was a fine, silky blue, the colour of the sky.

Emily lit her cigarette. ‘Daragh’s no good for you, Tilda. I know that he’s terribly handsome and that one just wants to die for him, but you mustn’t go to him. He wants to make you his mistress.’

Tilda had begun the complicated bit around the neckline. ‘I know.’

‘Then you won’t go?’

She was counting stitches. ‘I might, Em.’

‘You won’t be able to resist him. You think you will, but you won’t. Daragh won’t ever leave his wife for you, Tilda. He’s a Roman Catholic and they don’t allow divorce. Then you’ll have lost Max, who’s worth ten of Daragh.’

When she looked up from her knitting, Tilda saw that Emily was furious. Yet she could not explain: the sense of shame persisted, marking everything she did.

Emily stubbed out her cigarette in a saucer. ‘You are so obstinate!’ The door slammed as she left the room. Tilda began to knit again, but she had lost count of the stitches.

Two days later she went to the Savoy Hotel. Daragh had a large room on the second floor, overlooking the Thames. There, he poured two glasses of sherry, handing one to Tilda. Tilda broke the tense silence. ‘Tell me about your daughter, Daragh.’

He smiled at last and took an envelope from his pocket and spread out a handful of photographs on the table in front of her. ‘This is Caitlin.’

She looked down at the pictures. A dark-haired baby laughed back at her. ‘She’s beautiful, Daragh. How old is she now?’

‘Seven months,’ he said proudly. ‘She can sit up all by herself.’

There was another silence. Tilda, cradling her sherry glass between her fingers, said suddenly, ‘Why did you come here, Daragh? Why didn’t you leave me alone?’

‘I wanted to explain to you about Jossy.’ He rose and went to the window, his hands on the sill, looking out. ‘I wanted you to understand how it was.’

‘I
know
,’ she whispered. ‘I
know
how it was.’

‘Tilda.’ Daragh’s voice, and the expression in his eyes, pleaded with her. ‘Tilda, please try to understand. I was nothing in Ireland, and nothing still when I came here. I came to England to make something of myself, but I hadn’t realized how hard it would be. I didn’t propose to Jossy – she proposed to me. I had no idea. I thought she was going to offer me a job …’ The words trailed away. Then he said, ‘Your Aunt Sarah. It was her fault.’

‘Sarah pulled the strings,’ said Tilda bitterly, ‘but you jumped, didn’t you, Daragh?’

‘Oh, I jumped.’ There was self-disgust in his smile. ‘Like a marionette. But to own that land, that house – have you any idea what that meant to me? I’d been shut out all my life, not even allowed to
look
. And then, to have all that offered to me – mine, and not a soul to take it away. How could I refuse?’

She said coldly, ‘I was born with nothing, Daragh. I had you, though, for a while, and that meant more to me than all the fine houses. But you threw it away.’

‘Yes, God help me.’ There was pain in his eyes.

She could not stop herself asking. ‘Do you regret it?’

‘I regretted it the day I married. I regretted it as I stood at the altar.’

Another long silence, and then Tilda pointed to the photographs. ‘And now, Daragh?’

‘I’ll not lie to you, Tilda. I love my little girl. She is the light of my life.’

She whispered, ‘And Jossy?’

‘I feel nothing for her. I never have done. I can’t breathe, sometimes. She is … possessive.’

She thought that he was telling the truth. She felt a flicker of pity for Jossy, who loved Daragh. He sat down beside her again. She heard him say, ‘I know I’ve nothing to offer you. But love is something, isn’t it?’

‘But you haven’t love to offer any more, have you, Daragh? Don’t you see?’

He closed his eyes very tightly. ‘Tilda, I loved you the moment I set eyes on you, and I’ve never stopped loving you. I’ve made a mess of things, I’d be the first to admit. But for God’s sake … I’m not entirely to blame, am I?’

He seized her hand. His fingers curled round hers, his thumb caressed her palm. She whispered, ‘No. You are not entirely to blame.’ She had forgotten everything except the proximity of him, the warmth of him. When he drew her to him, she rested her forehead against his shoulder, and her eyes closed as he stroked her hair.

‘You haven’t asked me why I came here, Daragh.’

He was caressing the small bones at the top of her spine.

‘I came here to say goodbye,’ she said, and she felt his fingers, stroking the back of her neck, stiffen. ‘To say goodbye properly this time.’

Sitting up, she saw the mixture of disbelief and hurt on his face. ‘Is there someone else?’

She thought of Max, but she shook her head. ‘No. No-one else.’

‘I’d leave Jossy if I could, Tilda. You have to believe me.’ But she put her fingers against his mouth, silencing him. He drew away from her and they sat side by side on the sofa, no longer touching. Daragh looked down into his glass. ‘Love fades, I suppose. Just – dies. I killed it. I was angry and I was greedy and I killed it.’

‘No. No.’ It would have been better to lie, perhaps, but she would not. ‘It’s because of what you are, Daragh.
Who
you are. Who Jossy is.’

‘Jossy?’ He looked bewildered. ‘What has Jossy to do with this?’

‘Oh, Daragh.’ She felt at that moment terribly tired and terribly sad. ‘Jossy is my sister.’

A voice called out her name as Tilda ran down the stairs and across the foyer.

‘Max …’ His face was blurred by her tears.

‘Emily told me where you were.’

She glanced at him sharply. ‘Oh.’ She stood still in the middle of the foyer. Guests in evening clothes jostled her.

Max’s expression was grim. ‘I was concerned about you.’

‘A fate worse than death?’ Tilda laughed unsteadily. ‘You needn’t have worried.’

He watched her for a moment. ‘Would you like a drink?’

‘No. I hate this place.’ She shuddered.

‘Then shall we go somewhere else?’ He offered her his arm.

They walked to the Embankment. The evening sunlight glittered on the waters of the Thames. Barges and pleasure boats jostled on the river, their brightly coloured pennants caught by the breeze.

‘Has he gone?’ said Max eventually.

‘Daragh? I’ve no idea.’

They had reached the river. They leaned against the railing. ‘I would imagine,’ said Tilda, ‘that he’ll get very drunk and then sleep it off and go home tomorrow.’

They were both silent, watching a dinghy row out to one of the larger vessels. Tilda said softly, ‘I wish that I was on one of those boats and that I could sail away and never come back.’

‘That bad?’ asked Max.

She rubbed her eyes, and leaned her head against his shoulder. The sailor in the dinghy threw a rope up to the boat and was lifted aboard.

Max said, ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

She thought that perhaps she could tell him. That maybe she owed him something. For bothering about her. For picking her up off the floor, actually and metaphorically, more than once.

‘I’ve no intention of becoming Daragh’s mistress, Max.’

‘Which is why, presumably, he’s getting plastered.’

She shook her head. ‘Not quite. I told him that his wife is my half-sister. Which makes Daragh my brother-in-law. It would have been almost incest to sleep with him, wouldn’t it?’

He didn’t say anything, just looked at her.

‘It’s true, Max. I found out eighteen months ago. That was why I came to London.’

He gave her his handkerchief and she dabbed her eyes. Then she told him the whole story: Daragh and Aunt Sarah, and the letter that Aunt Sarah had written to Joscelin de Paveley. And, lastly, about her mother, and what had happened to her.

‘Are you shocked?’ she asked, when she had finished.

He shrugged. ‘It’s a rotten, pitiless law, the one that put your mother in the asylum. And the rape laws, too – not much better.’

‘I sometimes wonder,’ said Tilda thoughtfully, ‘which one of my parents I take after. The mad one or the wicked one.’

‘The beautiful one,’ he said.

‘Max.’ She turned away. The boat set sail along the Thames; Tilda watched it decrease in size until the dinghy, towed in its wake, was no longer visible. ‘When I came to London,’ she said slowly, ‘I tried to pretend that I hadn’t a past. I thought that I could start again, remake myself like an old dress – shorten bits, sew on new buttons, make it look different.’

‘You’ve done pretty well.’

‘I am ashamed,’ she whispered.

‘You’ve nothing to be ashamed of,’ he said gently. ‘You’re neither the mad one nor the wicked one. You are Tilda, and you are beautiful and clever and delightful, and you can make of your life what you wish. You can work – or you can have a family—’

‘I think I should like a family.’ She needed lots of people, she thought. Lots of people to fill up the gaps.

‘Yet no-one but Daragh will do for you?’

She glanced sharply at him and shook her head. ‘I’m through with that sort of love, Max. It’s like – oh, riding one of those fast, noisy motorcycles. Exciting, but exhausting.’

He said bluntly, ‘You haven’t said that you don’t love him.’

‘No.’ She pressed her fisted hand against her heart, as though it hurt. ‘I will be able to one day, though. It’ll just take a while.’

‘Then … would you consider marrying me?’

She heard her own quick intake of breath.

‘I never thought I’d ask anyone.’ He grimaced. ‘I’d planned on becoming a revolting old bachelor – you know, a dreadful maroon dressing gown, and not doing the washing-up for a week. But you seem to have distracted me, Tilda. I love you. I can’t think of anything nicer than spending the rest of my life with you.’

‘Max – dear Max—’

‘You are conscious of the honour I do you, but you must regretfully etcetera etcetera?’ There was pain beneath the flippancy.

She walked away from him, sitting down on a bench, trying to think. When he called back to her, ‘Tilda, I’m not asking you to say that you’re madly in love with me—’ several passers-by turned and stared, and she shook her head again.

‘I enjoy your company.’ She made a list on her fingers. ‘You make me laugh, and you’re good to talk to. You’re kind—’

Oh God!’ He bent his head in mock despair. ‘How crushing—’

‘Don’t be silly, Max. We like the same sort of things. We think the same way about things. We’re both
running
, I think.’

‘But …?’ he said.

‘You’re rude and arrogant and difficult, of course.’ But she stopped teasing him, and said simply, ‘Max, I don’t want to be madly in love with anyone. Not ever again. If you’re prepared to accept that, then – yes, I think that I might marry you.’

She saw him close his eyes for a moment, and then he straightened, and walked over to the bench. She stood up, and he put his arms round her and kissed her. She thought that if it hadn’t been for Daragh, then it might never have come to this. They’d have circled each other for months or years, both too bruised by the past to admit a desire for a common future, drifting apart eventually, need and liking killed by hesitancy and lack of trust. He kissed her again, and then held her for a long time, her head cradled against his shoulder.