If You Were the Only Girl

‘I can’t imagine what it would be like to be all on my own, especially in a great big house like this,’ Lucy said.

‘Well, the house in England is bigger than this one,’ Cook said. ‘So when he would sneak into the kitchen I would turn a blind eye and often found him a wee job to do, and I would always find him something tasty to eat.

‘Sometimes Lady Heatherington’s friend Lady Sybil Ponsomby would call with Jessica, her spoilt daughter. Master Clive would find himself landed with her, and a fine madam she was. Wanted her own way in everything and Clive, who always hated unpleasantness, would give in to her. He brought her into the kitchen a time or two, but it was obvious, though she was only a girl, that she thought us all beneath her and I was relieved when Clive stopped bringing her.’

‘Did Master Clive mind playing with her?’ Lucy asked.

‘Don’t think he was that fussed, to be honest, but course he couldn’t say anything,’ Cook said. ‘And the mothers were all for them getting on. But for all her mother is a good-enough-looking woman, by all accounts, the daughter, Jessica, has no beauty to speak off. Proper plain Jane, she is.’

‘Never?’ Clodagh said.

‘Yes, she is,’ Cook maintained with a definite nod of the head. ‘Of course I saw it myself when she was a child, but I thought she might have improved, but the housemaid used to serve tea to the Mistress when the Ponsombys came to call and she said she got no better. I could never understand it.’

‘What a shame,’ Lucy said. ‘Still, I suppose that didn’t bother Master Clive, and I suppose this girl Jessica was better company than no one at all.’

‘Maybe,’ Cook said, ‘but there is no Jessica here now and Master Clive will be along before either of us are much older, you’ll see.’

Cook was right. The following morning, Clive sidled in to lean against the cupboard. He ran his finger around the mixing bowl on the counter and pinched a couple of cakes from the cooling trays. Cook’s lips pursed, but both Lucy and Clodagh knew that she wasn’t really cross and there was no snap in her voice when she said, ‘Master Clive, if you keep on, I’ll cut your fingers off.’

‘You know, Ada, you have been saying that as long as I can remember.’ Clive, a twinkle in his eyes, suddenly leapt forward, grabbed Cook around her waist and planted a kiss on her cheek.

Cook was flustered. ‘Oh, give over, do, Master Clive.’

‘Ah,’ Clive said, pulling Cook even closer. ‘You know you love me really.’

Cook’s face was flushed crimson to the roots of her hair. Lucy was astounded and so, she saw, was Clodagh.

‘You should have seen her, Evie,’ Lucy said when they reached the safety of their room very late that night. ‘Bright red, she was. Golly, just imagine what she would do to me and Clodagh if we behaved half as bad.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Clodagh. ‘But he is the master’s son, don’t forget, and one that Cook has obviously got a soft spot for.’

‘Oh, that’s as plain as the nose on your face,’ Evie said. ‘Real favourite, he is, I’d say. And I tell you what, I wouldn’t complain if he gave me a big kiss on the cheek.’

‘Evie!’

‘What? It’s not likely to happen, is it?’ Evie said. ‘But he is devilishly handsome, don’t you think?’

‘I think he is the most beautiful man I have ever seen,’ Lucy said simply.

Evie hooted with laughter. ‘You don’t call a man beautiful! Anyway you are far too young to be thinking of things like that.’

‘Leave her alone,’ Clodagh said. ‘She’s only expressing an opinion, and he is nice-looking and seems to have a soft spot for you as well, Lucy.’

‘He hasn’t,’ Lucy protested. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, look how he was just before Christmas,’ Clodagh said. ‘Calling you by your full name and all.’

‘Yeah,’ Evie added. ‘And he watches you all the time and smiles at you a lot.’

‘He smiles at everyone,’ Lucy said. ‘He’s just a smiley person.’

‘No,’ Evie said. ‘He definitely has a soft spot for you.’

Lucy blushed and Clodagh said, ‘Don’t worry about it, Lucy. The gentry don’t usually bother with the likes of us and our Master Clive will probably be just the same when he has grown up a bit. Just now you probably amuse him because you are so small for your age.’

The girls weren’t the only ones to notice Clive’s attention to Lucy, for he visited the kitchen at least once a day and he always had some word to say on a teasing note to Lucy in particular. She was well aware that Mr Carlisle didn’t like special notice taken of a girl on the bottom rung of the ladder, but she didn’t see what she could do to stop him. If she was honest she didn’t want to stop him because he disturbed her in a way no man or boy had ever done before – not that she’d had that much experience in that department. But with Master Clive she only had to see him, or hear his voice, and she would start to tingle all over.

There were no festivities planned for New Year. Rory told them that though Lord Heatherington had enjoyed the visit of the Mattersons and the Farandykes, he had been exhausted after their departure. In deference to that, the staff’s own celebrations for the coming of 1936 were muted. As for Lucy, she was quite dispirited because the harsh winter weather that held the North of Ireland in such an iron grip meant that she was unable to go home in January when the rails were too coated with ice for the rail buses to run. She was especially disappointed because as well as her wages she had the five shillings that Clara had given to her on Christmas Day, and she had thought at the time that she would use it to buy some little things for all of them in Letterkenny, but the weather had been too bad to allow her to go there either.

She was thinking about this one day in early January as she scrubbed the steps up to the front door when she was startled as the door suddenly opened and Clive stood there, illuminated in the threshold for a moment. He was dressed in riding gear and appeared annoyed to see her on her hands and knees scrubbing away.

He knew that she must have started before it was light because the black winter’s night was only just turning into the gloom of a grey pearly winter dawn. It was also so cold that whispery breath escaped from his mouth as he said, ‘Lucy why don’t you go inside, now? They say it will snow later, which is why I want to get my ride in early, so all your work will be in vain, and what’s more it’s bitterly cold.’

‘It’s all right, sir,’ Lucy said. ‘I’m used to it.’ She spoke the truth and just then she wasn’t cold, for the proximity of Clive Heatherington had caused the heat to flow through her body in a very odd way.

Her words, though, seemed to irritate Clive. ‘This is nonsense,’ he said as he took her elbow to encourage her to her feet. ‘Get inside, little Lucy. Whatever you say it is far too cold for you to be out like this. If anyone complains tell them to come to me.’ Their eyes suddenly met and it was as if they locked together. Lucy was unable to tear her gaze away and then, without any warning, Clive bent his head and kissed her cheek.

She gasped and put her hand to the place he had kissed, which seemed to burn under her fingers as he bounded down the rest of the steps. She returned to the house in a sort of daze as she recalled his eyes so intense and deep blue that she’d felt as if she were drowning in them. She knew she would tell no one of the encounter. She wanted that memory all to herself.

When he came into the kitchen later that day, though, Lucy was at first very embarrassed, but Master Clive was just as normal so she was soon as relaxed as much as she ever was when he was around. Not that he was around much longer, because just a few days later he returned to school. Lucy knew it would be a duller kitchen without the possibility of Master Clive’s visits.

Adding to the despondency of them all was the snow. It began in earnest the day that Clive left and fell so thickly that the Lodge was virtually cut off.

‘I know we always have snow, but I can never remember it like this,’ Clara said to Lucy one day when the snow reached halfway to the windowsills.

It was the evening before Lucy should have seen her family in Mountcharles, but no one had been able to leave the grounds. Though the gardener had made valiant attempts to clear the drives, as soon as he had, the unrelenting snow covered them again.

‘I’ve never seen it this bad either,’ Lucy said to Clara. ‘But I had never been as far as Letterkenny before.’

Clara nodded. ‘You’re right, of course, and yet I should have given it some thought, for we are quite a lot further north. Do you mind very much?’

Lucy did mind, but she reasoned it was no good saying that to Clara, for she could hardly do anything about it. ‘Well, it’s not just me, is it?’ she said. ‘Clodagh and Evie can’t go home either.’

‘It is good too to see that you are being so mature about this,’ Clara replied. ‘And I am glad to see that you get on so well with the other two girls. It is what you needed, friends of more or less your age.’

Even royalty, it seemed, was not immune to the rigours and dangers of the extreme cold, and the English King George died on 20 January. It was reported on the wireless and Rory told them all about it as they sat having their evening meal.

‘So his son Edward will be the new king, then?’ Clara said, wrinkling her nose in disapproval.

Rory shrugged. ‘Seems so.’

Lucy had seen the expression on Clara’s face. ‘Don’t you want this Edward to be king?’ she asked, wondering why she or any other ordinary person should care who was on the throne, because it would hardly change their lives in any way.

‘He likes the Germans too much,’ Clara said.

‘Yeah, and a murdering lot of buggers they are.’

‘Mrs Murphy!’ Mr Carlisle exclaimed outraged.

Cook gave a defiant toss of her head as she went on, ‘You can say what you like and be as shocked as you like as well, but I’ll say it again, the Germans are buggers and murdering buggers into the bargain. Look what they have done to this family. Three sons, they’ve lost, and if that isn’t enough to make someone swear then I don’t know what is.’

‘That’s not the point—’ Mr Carlisle began primly.

But Cook cut him off: ‘Oh, yes, it is exactly the bloody point, Mr Carlisle, and I don’t want a king of this country to be friends with a nation that started a war that stripped England of thousands and thousands of fit young men.’

‘She’s right,’ Norah said. ‘Madame said something similar. And then there’s that Wallis Simpson that Edward is always seen with.’

‘Who’s she?’ Lucy asked.

‘Some American heiress,’ Norah said, ‘and a divorcee, into the bargain.’

‘Well, he will have to give her up if he is to take up the crown,’ Clara said. ‘We could hardly have a divorced American called Queen Wallis sharing it, can we now?’

The three young girls giggled, for it was just too ridiculous, but there was no time to talk further then because Cook had jobs for them all. The topic of the succession didn’t go away, and as time passed it seemed the staff at Windthorpe Lodge were not the only ones to be concerned, especially as the new king continued his association with Wallis Simpson, who seemed to like the Germans even more than he did.

A month or so later there was news closer to home. Rory told them that the General had been more active since Christmas and had taken a few steps up and down his room. ‘He wants to walk outdoors really,’ Rory said. ‘He is an outdoor sort of person. Course, I know he is really hankering to get back on a horse.’

‘Oh,’ Mr Carlisle said, his thin mouth pursed in disapproval. ‘Do you think that wise?’

Rory gave a rueful grin. ‘No one really thought he would make it at all at first, not realising what a fighter he is and, as he said to me, it was no good him hanging on to his life if that life was to be played out in his bedroom and his only means of getting about was being pushed in a wheelchair. He says he wants to feel the grass under his feet and the wind in his hair,’ Rory said.

‘Well, he may get his wish,’ Mr Carlisle said. ‘There is definitely a thaw on the way.’

Mr Carlisle was right. The icicles that had hung from the windows had melted away and the frost no longer gilded the hedgerows and covered the lawns. Streams had begun to run freely again. The snow that had fallen had melted into soiled and slushy dark grey lumps and there was the sound of dripping water everywhere and a feeling of dampness in the air.

Rory nodded. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘He wants to be really well when Master Clive comes home again in the summer, for they won’t have all that long together because Master Clive starts his European tour in early July.’

Lucy, though knowing that when Mr Carlisle was at the table, the three younger girls were not to speak unless addressed directly, was surprised enough to burst out, ‘European tour?’

Mr Carlisle glared at her, but before he could deliver one of his scathing remarks, Clara said, ‘A lot of young men from this type of establishment do this kind of thing before they go off to university.’

‘Oh,’ Lucy cried. ‘Wouldn’t that be just wonderful, to see lots of other countries?’

‘Whether it would or not, Cassidy, is no concern of yours,’ Mr Carlisle snapped. ‘Kindly attend to your breakfast.’

Lucy obediently bent her head over her food, but she wasn’t too bothered about Mr Carlisle. She hadn’t much to do with him really. She was always careful not to offend Cook or Clara, though, and Clodagh gave her a furtive kick under the table in sympathy. However, Lucy listened avidly to the adventures planned for Master Clive so that she could tell her family the next time she visited.

It was early March before she was able to go home and then, as the Cassidys sat down after Mass to a bacon and egg breakfast courtesy of Mrs Murphy, they listened to Lucy’s tale.

‘So where is he going?’ Danny asked. ‘I mean, what countries?’

‘I’ll hardly remember them all,’ Lucy said, her brow furrowing as she tried to recall what Rory and Mr Carlisle had said. ‘It will be France first – I do know that – and Spain, and they are due to go to Italy, too, but course, the main country they will be heading for is Germany.’

‘Why’s that then?’ Danny asked

‘Because of the Olympic Games.’

‘And what’s that when it’s all about?’ Minnie asked.

Lucy gave a secret smile of satisfaction because she hadn’t known a thing about it until Clara explained it.

‘It’s a special games where one country can compete against others in all sorts of sports and all the people who compete have got to be amateurs. That means they can’t get paid for it,’ she went on, knowing that ‘amateur’ was a word that they wouldn’t be familiar with. ‘And they pick three winners for each event, the first one gets a gold medal and the one who comes second has a silver one and there is a bronze for the athlete in third place. Lots of countries join in and it’s held every four years. Each country sort of takes it in turns to put it on and this year it’s Germany’s turn.’

‘Well, you seem to know all about it, at least,’ Minnie said, ‘though I doubt it will make any difference to our lives.’

‘Nor mine,’ Lucy admitted. ‘But they all talk about it round the table and that, and you can’t help listening. It all began because Rory was saying that the Master – you know, the General – wanted to be well enough to spend some time with Master Clive before he sets off on this trip.’

‘Isn’t he an invalid?’

‘Well, he was when I got there first,’ Lucy said. ‘He spent a lot of time in his room and only came down for meals, and then Rory had to carry him down.’

‘So is he getting better now?’ Danny asked.

Lucy told her family that the General had confounded doctors by getting to his feet and started the long process of learning to walk again. ‘Course, I don’t know how much better he will get, but Rory said his ambition is to be able to ride horses again.’ She shrugged and went on, ‘He might never be able to ride again, for all his determination, but Rory said that he has made greater strides since the great freeze ended and he has been able to get outside in the fresh air.’

‘Well, that would make anyone feel better, especially after being cooped up in a room for a long time,’ Minnie said. ‘Anyway, we have some news of our own. Tell Lucy about it, Dan.’

‘I have got a job as well,’ Danny said. ‘Or at least I had a job through the winter.’

Lucy had sensed in the house a small ease of the extreme poverty that she had experienced before she left. It was such a slight shift that anyone else might not have noticed it, but it was there and she thought that it might have been her money or maybe Clara’s gift portioned out that had made the difference and now it seemed that ease in the house was due to Danny’s endeavours. She was irritated and couldn’t really understand why.

‘How can you have a job when you are still at school?’ she demanded.

‘It’s weekends,’ Danny said. ‘I work for Farmer Haycock. I went and asked him if he had any jobs I could do.’

‘So what do you do?’

‘Well, he keeps lots of horses, as you know, and they weren’t getting any exercise with the ground so hard and they had to be taken out into the yard, but first I had to use boiling water to melt the ice coating the yard and a really stiff brush ’cos there can’t be the slightest bit of ice that the horses might slip on. Then I have to lead them out one by one and walk them round and round and then clean out their stalls. Farmer Haycock showed me how to make a bran mash for them and I must always make sure their drinking water is not iced over. Then I have to groom them, put the blankets back over them and clean all the tack. He says I am a natural with the horses, like Dad was with cows, and he gives me five bob a week.’

‘Five shillings!’ Lucy cried, thinking life was unfair when she worked much longer hours for not much more. ‘Still,’ she said, ‘I get all my meals thrown in.’

‘I do too,’ Danny said. ‘Haycock’s wife gives me a big feed in the kitchen at dinnertime, with pudding and everything, and a few sandwiches to take home for my tea. And if we didn’t eat all the pudding she lets me take that home as well for the others. Point is, though, that job might have come to an end now the ice has thawed. I mean, I went up yesterday and there was no ice in the yard and when I said you were coming home today Haycock said to have the day off. So I only got half a crown, and he might not want me at all next weekend. I will go up and see, though. Maybe there will be something else. He says he will employ me to get the harvest in later in the year and pay me a proper wage so that’s something to look forward to.’

Lucy was thoroughly ashamed of her annoyance at Danny getting any sort of job. All he was trying to do was help their mother and his siblings. Her mother looked better than Lucy had seen her in years, and she knew that, though Minnie was still very poor, Lucy’s own contribution, and the added extra from Danny, had removed the worry from her mind that they might starve to death or be taken to the poorhouse. That alone had made her look better. The clothes from Clara had made a difference too. Lucy was quite surprised to see that with more food, less strenuous work and more money to dress nicely and look after herself better, her mother could look quite pretty.

SIX

After such a ferocious winter, the spring was a good one, and Easter, in the second week of April, was almost balmy. Lucy had hoped that Master Clive might be home for the holidays, but Clara told her that as the exams for his Higher School Certificate started not that long after Easter, he was staying with a schoolfriend in England where they were having extra revision lessons. ‘And, I believe, seeing quite a lot of the Ponsombys, or probably, I should say, it is Jessica Ponsomby he is interested in visiting.’

A totally unreasonable and unexpected stab of jealousy shot through Lucy as she said, ‘Cook told me about her. She says she’s a spoilt madam.’

Clara’s lips nipped together in annoyance. ‘Cook has a slack mouth at times,’ she said. ‘And I don’t know that she has seen that much of Miss Jessica to make such statements. Anyway, people change. The Ponsombys are old friends of the Heatheringtons. Norah told me that Lady Ponsomby had lost a son in the Great War, and when she learnt that Lady Amelia had lost sons as well, it was like a bond shared between them. Jessica is a year younger than Clive and their mothers have high hopes of them.’

‘High hopes?’

‘Yes,’ Clara said. ‘To marry. It really would be eminently sensible.’ And she added, ‘With her brother dead, Miss Jessica will inherit everything when her father dies, and she will also have a sizeable settlement when she is married. Sometimes the size of a dowry is better than a pretty face.’

Lucy was quite shocked. She had naïvely thought that you married someone you loved, who could easily not be that eminently sensible or very rich, but your choice at least. However, she was too miserable to say any of this. She knew that people like those she worked for often had different ways of doing things and this choosing someone who was eminently sensible to marry was just another indication of that.

As spring slid into a mild summer, Lord Heatherington got astride a horse again and Rory told them he had been like a dog with two tails. There was also no problem with Lucy going home every month, and, though she looked forward to it, she was always concerned by how much her siblings seemed to change each time and what little part she had in their lives now.

This was more or less confirmed when Liam made his first Holy Communion in late June.

‘It isn’t even that I can’t be there,’ she complained to Clodagh. ‘I mean, I would like to be there, it is a special day, but I am more upset by the fact that he more or less expected that I wouldn’t make it. He wasn’t the tiniest bit upset, like it didn’t matter to him one way or the other.’

‘Did you want him to be upset?’ Clodagh asked. ‘Would it have made you feel better if he was breaking his heart crying over it because you couldn’t be there, however upset he was?’

‘I know,’ Lucy said resignedly. ‘And no, I suppose that I don’t want him upset, of course I don’t. It’s just …’

‘Lucy, it would be the same if you were married and lived a distance away.’

‘I don’t want to be married,’ Lucy said. ‘Do you?’

‘Not likely,’ Clodagh said. ‘Well, not yet, anyway. Good job really, because where do we go to meet any men or boys?’

‘We go to Mass.’

‘Well, I’ve seen no likely looking chaps there, have you?’

‘No,’ Lucy said with a smile. ‘But then I haven’t been looking.’

‘Haven’t you?’ Clodagh asked. ‘You probably will in a year or two, but I wouldn’t waste your time looking in Letterkenny. And then if you found a boy you fancied, you would have no time to see him.’

‘Does that bother you?’

‘No, at the moment it doesn’t,’ Clodagh said. ‘But I’m definitely not going to stay in service for ever. For now, though, there is going to be a bit of excitement for us because Master Clive will be home next week.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Lucy said, ‘I had almost forgotten that.’ She blushed as she spoke because she knew exactly when Clive was expected home. The date seemed to be engraved on her heart.

Clodagh hadn’t noticed Lucy’s blushes, and she went on, ‘I wonder what Master Clive will make of his father’s progress. Neither the Master nor the Mistress has told him in letters or anything because Rory said the Master wanted it to be a total surprise.’

‘It will be a surprise all right,’ Lucy said. ‘Or maybe shock is a better word, because didn’t Rory say that the Master was trotting round on his horse the other day as if he’d never been out of the saddle?’

‘He did,’ Clodagh said. ‘He did indeed.’

Clive was indeed shocked, but also delighted to see his father so well. The first thing they did was go for a ride together. Word of this soon reached the kitchen and everyone was pleased. Clara had seen them both ride out together and said that it filled her heart with joy to see Lord Heatherington almost returned to the man he had once been. Aware of the short time he would have alone with his parents before his travelling companions arrived, Clive rode with his father every day and was also an amusing companion at the dinner table in the evening.