Eve picked a generous bunch of lilac from the bush in her front garden and wrapped up the stems in tinfoil and newspaper, before getting a nice square of tissue paper to place around the bouquet. She set off early for Ludlow Hall, not wanting anybody to see her walking down the main street holding a huge spray of flowers.
Michael was the only person moving about Rosdaniel. He knew her mission, so he waved, giving her a thumbs-up. The night before, she had told him she intended to call on the new owner. He endorsed the idea and even offered to take her there.
“I think it is something I have to do on my own, Michael,” she said quietly.
She always liked the walk down the hill to Ludlow and this morning was no different. Stopping for a few moments at the bridge, the water hurrying and gushing over the rocks, she remembered all the times Arnold had threatened to get rid of this treacherous narrow bridge, have the road widened. Puff talk, she called it, and it annoyed her. It saddened her, too, that he could not appreciate the little bridge and stream, which offered an oasis of calm.
Letting her hand plane along the top of the bridge until the end, she continued on the journey to the front gates of Ludlow Hall, dragged across and closed, with a sign hanging crooked: “Private Property. Keep Out.”
Slipping through the stile, she trekked slowly up the avenue, her step heavy with trepidation. How many times had she done it in the past, irritating Arnold, making him give out?
“Darling, you don’t need to walk anywhere,” he said, and she knew he was annoyed, not wanting to give the impression that they could not afford to run their gas guzzler of a car.
The house looked quiet as she approached, the sun glinting on the top windows, the wisteria like a ghost crawling across the façade, dipping into the crevices. Shutters upstairs were still pulled across and she wondered if she was too early. In her day, nobody would have got this far without the geese chasing them across the field, the dog turning out from the back. She stood and listened, the breeze tousling the polished leaves of the rhododendron, the branches creaking heavily. In the distance, she could hear the Dublin bus rev up the hill to Rosdaniel. She did not want to be seen wandering around the place, as if she still owned Ludlow Hall. Not sure what to do, she perched on the stone seat at the front. She liked the view from here: the avenue, the paddocks when they were lush, the fences mended, the horses sometimes cantering over to push against her, searching for a treat. The geese had flocked over too, sometimes giving away her hiding place on the seat as they hissed and croaked too loud, traipsing across the flowerbeds so that the housekeeper ran out to shoo them away.
She realised that if the American looked out her window now, it would seem odd that she was sitting here, so Eve got up and climbed the stone steps to the front door, stopping to flick dried moss off the rusty balustrading.
Pressing the bell, she heard it brrinng through the house, twirling across the rooms.
She pressed a second time, and was about to leave when a woman came to the window of the drawing room and beckoned to her to go around the back. Eve smiled, dashing down the steps, a little self-conscious that she was carrying a big bunch of flowers.
The American, wearing a heavy dressing gown which was too long and tied with one of Arnold’s old belts, stood at the back door.
“I am sorry, did I get you up?”
“I’m not much of a sleeper.”
“Eve Brannigan, from the village. I wanted to say welcome.” Shyly, she handed across the bunch of lilac.
“This is very kind of you.”
“They are nothing special, just from my patch of a front garden.”
Eve did not quite comprehend, but she detected a certain reticence from the American about the gift. As if she was aware of the observation, Connie smiled brightly.
“Won’t you come in, Mrs Brannigan?”
“No need to offer, I just wanted to make you feel welcome.”
“I know you owned the place for a long time. Maybe you can help me: tell me how I get the front door open?”
“Do you have the key?”
“Yes, but I can’t turn it.”
Eve laughed. “There was always a special knack with that door. My mother-in-law said we would end up trapped in this house and burned alive, our bodies piled up inside the locked front door, just because we could not turn the key. I am sorry, it is a sordid story from a melancholic old hag.”
Connie laughed. “Dramatic. Now I really have to get it open. Maybe I should get a new lock.”
“It is an old door, best to learn how to open it.” Eve was afraid she sounded too sharp, so she stepped back, lest the American change her mind.
Connie, beckoning Eve to follow, walked ahead to the hall. Tentatively, Eve stepped into the kitchen. It was cold, the cobwebs netting high up across the ceiling. The stove had not been lit, but a bowl had been placed in the middle of the kitchen table in some attempt to make the place appear lived in.
Stepping through to the hall, a pain drifted across her chest. The paintings were still on the walls, the hall table, mahogany, dark with the cold marble top, in the same place. She had hated it from the word go, tried to soften it with pots of geraniums, but Arnold said it made it too showy, only allowing a glass vase with roses.
“Otherwise, it makes us look like any house down the main street of Rosdaniel,” he said. She acquiesced, not wanting a big show of words about a few flowerpots.
“There is a huge amount of post here. I stacked it all up; I presume you will want to take it with you.”
Eve looked at the wire milk-bottle basket, piled high with brown and white envelopes and flyers advertising things from years before.
“Throw it all away, if you don’t mind. There is nothing there I want to read. I am gone out of this place a few years. If there are any bills, I think they know at this stage they are not getting paid.”
Connie thought better than to pursue it and handed the key to Eve. A big old-fashioned jailer’s key, it was usually kept on a hook high up beside the door. Eve put it in the lock and pushed against the door, slightly lifting the key before turning it. The lock snapped back and Eve stepped aside.
“You should open it: it is your front door now.”
Connie pulled at the door, but it did not move.
“It has been shut a few years. I don’t know of anybody who came to the front, even in my last year here. Let me help.”
Eve prised a grip on the letterbox and they both heaved. The door gave way slowly, the paint loudly unsticking. Connie gave a last pull, so that the door opened wide, spiders and earwigs running for cover.
“There is a beautiful vista from this hall door,” Eve said quietly, stepping back, hardly able to take it in, only seeing it the way it used to be when sometimes she sat out on the step, her sewing on her lap. It was always when Arnold was away from Ludlow Hall, because otherwise he complained that sitting on the front step was a common pastime.
Michael had put the stone seat there for her. He came across her one day sitting out on a cushion on the top step; the next day, she woke up to see him busy at work out the front.
“I notice you like to sit out, so I thought I could make it a bit more comfortable for you,” he said.
She brewed some tea and they sat together, when the stone slab was in place, watching the geese and the horses, the dog at their feet. It was days before Arnold noticed the stone seat.
“It is a gift to both of us from Michael, such a kind man,” she said.
Arnold looked at her oddly. “I wish he had asked before he put it in place. It is so heavy. But there is no point moving it now.” Arnold’s irritation made his voice boom through the rooms.
“Do you miss it?”
Eve at first did not realise Connie had asked her a question.
“The memories are flooding back, being here, but I have a simpler life now, which suits me. I miss Ludlow, but not as much as I originally thought I would.”
“Come and have tea,” Connie said, closing the front door.
“Maybe double check you can open the door first.”
Connie did, and made to leave the key back on the hook. “It is a stretch. Why so high?”
“That is another mother-in-law story I am afraid. When Arnold, my husband, was young he was quite the sleepwalker. One night Martha, his mother, was lying in bed listening to an almighty racket, worrying somebody was coming to kill them all. By the time she got her husband to wake from his deep sleep, she was terrified. He went down to find the front door wide open, the wind raging through the hallway, making the paintings knock off the walls. He closed the front door and was quite cross to be disturbed. Martha looked in on a then eight-year-old Arnold, but his bed was empty. That is when the panic started. They found him down by the lake, wading in up to his chest, trying to catch a fish. After that, the key was put at an unnaturally high level for a child. I think they also had a makeshift alarm set up, a piece of string attached to a bell, so if Arnold went sleepwalking again, they would be alerted.”
“I guess you have a lot of stories like this.”
“You should have stopped me: when I get caught up in the memories, I tend to prattle on.”
“It is nice to have such lovely memories.”
Eve thought there was a whiff of sadness about this young woman, so she put her hand on Connie’s shoulder.
“I am sure you will make your own good memories here.”
They walked together to the kitchen, where Eve remained standing until Connie indicated to her to pull a chair up to the kitchen table.
“Should we have tea in the sitting room?” Connie asked.
“No need on my account.”
Nervously, Connie switched on the kettle, standing waiting for it to boil. Plopping two teabags into mugs, she poured the boiling water in.
“Will a slice of lemon do? I don’t have milk, I have yet to do a grocery shop.”
“You should get Michael Conway to do all that for you. He delivers and will never leave you with the bad stuff.”
“I only have myself to look after, so it is not so bad.”
Eve shifted uncomfortably on the chair. “You are a brave woman to come this far on your own.”
“Brave? I hardly think so, but thank you.” Connie picked up a teaspoon, feeding it between her fingers. “Stupid is a more accurate word.”
Eve did not answer.
“Mrs Brannigan.”
“Eve, please.”
“Eve, how do I get to know people in the village? I smile, I greet, but I can never seem to get past introductions or comments on the weather. Everybody is polite – well, nearly everybody – but nobody really talks to me.”
“I had a few problems when I moved here too. Rosdaniel is a great spot; it just takes a while. After several decades I don’t think I am a blow-in any more, but it takes time.”
Connie let the spoon drop onto the table with a clatter.
“I’m thinking of giving up before I even start. I have never come across anything like this before.”
“Ludlow has been part of this village for a very long time. People take it personally if they can’t walk through the grounds for fear of prosecution.”
Connie sighed loudly. “Pardon me if I want a little privacy.”
“Not everybody is bad. Maybe when you get to know us . . .”
“But how am I going to do that? Mrs Gorman and Mr Conway are the only people who converse with me, and now you.” She stopped, knowing she sounded hysterical.
“Now, now, Rosdaniel never makes it easy at the start. You just have to know how to deal with everyone. You just have to find a way, like I did.”
Eve let her chair swing back on two legs as she told the story of how, in her day, she turned around the ladies of Rosdaniel and averted a crisis.
It was not long after Arnold had taken over the running of the Ludlow estate. He was incensed when the locals strolled through the fields and down to the lake, nodding hello to him as if they had a right of way. Often he marched over and told them he would prefer if they walked elsewhere. He told them his mother might have accepted that intrusion but he and his wife would prefer to have some privacy. At first, Eve felt it was not her place to get involved, but when Arnold closed the gates of Ludlow Hall, putting up a “Keep Out. Private Property” sign, there was uproar. Locals who crossed over the fields regularly were the first to register their fury, but were quickly followed by the rest of Rosdaniel’s citizens, who saw the Hall as their recreation park all year round. While there was no legal right of way, there was a long-held tradition on both sides that those from Rosdaniel could walk the lands around Ludlow Hall.
When all the apples from the orchard were stolen in one night, Arnold was furious, his opinion of Rosdaniel as a hotbed of vandals now entrenched. A delegation of local men seeking to meet Arnold was ordered off the property. It was only when, for two days running, supplies were not delivered, no post arrived and the housekeeper did not turn up for work, that Eve fully realised the ramifications of her husband’s actions.
Michael suggested she intervene, but in a quiet way.
Not telling Arnold, she walked into the village to the weekly coffee morning of the Rosdaniel Women’s Club. Outside the village hall, she could hear the buzz of conversation as the ten or twelve women inside had coffee and cake. Knocking lightly on the door, she walked in. The postman’s wife was the first to see her, quickly elbowing Margaret Kelly, the Ludlow Hall housekeeper, beside her.
“Good morning, ladies. I was hoping I could join,” Eve said, a smile on her face.
Hetty Gorman walked towards her and put out her hand.
“You are welcome, Mrs Brannigan, but you must realise this is difficult.”
Eve took Hetty’s hand a bit too tight, to stay firm in her resolve.
“Ladies, my husband has been stupid. I am here to make amends. I was hoping we could work a way around all this, without the men realising anything.”
One woman laughed loudly. “My man is in a right pickle because his boss told him to get off his high horse and deliver to the Hall or else.”
“I want to go back to work, but my husband won’t hear of it,” Margaret Kelly said quietly.
“What will we do?” Eve asked.
Hetty Gorman clapped her hands loudly. “We will all sit down. Finally, the ladies’ group has something exciting to do.”
Eve was introduced to each woman. In turn, they stood up, Kathryn Rodgers vigorously shaking her hand, Bernie Martin grunting her greeting, Dana Marshall using the opportunity to say Ludlow Hall did not belong only to Arnold Brannigan but to the whole of Rosdaniel. Rebecca Fleming gave a formal handshake. Eithne Hall and Marcella Lyons were the only ones to stay sitting, nodding a quick greeting.
Eve, nervous, gabbed on to cover the awkwardness they all felt.
“My Arnold is a city man. He is not like his father, but he loves Ludlow Hall and is deeply upset by what has happened.”
“So upset that he was off in his big car early this morning,” Marcella Lyons sniped.
“He has business in the city for the next two days, which is why I think we could work this out while he is away. I will open the gates and take down the signs when I go home. You will come back to work,” she said, turning to Margaret. Nodding to Helen O’Dea, the postman’s wife, she said, “Your husband will deliver as normal.” She spun around to a shy woman, Nell Beecham, who was on the outside of the circle. “Aren’t you the woman who tends that beautiful garden just back from the main street?”
“Mrs Beecham. My husband is the Church of Ireland reverend here, though it is a very small community.”
Hetty Gorman, a sweat forming on her brow, pushed in with her words. “We don’t exclude anyone, Mrs Brannigan, not in this group anyway.”
Eve turned to Mrs Beecham. “My husband returns at lunchtime on Monday. Could you pick some of the best flowers from that lovely garden and make up a bouquet and have your husband deliver them to Ludlow? Address the card to me, inviting me for tea. And Hetty, could you send a letter inviting me to the women’s club?”
“I can, but what good will this do?”
“No man will go against his wife wanting to be accepted into the local community.”
Mrs Beecham pulled her chair closer. “But won’t the men be upset if it is all taken out of their hands?”
“I think we can get around that,” Hetty said, her voice almost a whisper.
The rest of the women leaned in to listen.
“Nell Beecham, you ask your husband’s advice about the sending of the bouquet. He is sure to recommend this kind gesture. Forgiveness and all that.”
“I will try.”
“Why don’t we all remark on the fact that we heard the gates have been reopened, start a conversation about Ludlow Hall being open to all again.”
Eithne Hall, who had not spoken yet, piped up. “That just leaves the whole thing about the apples from the orchard.”
They all stared at Eve.
“Arnold said it was a bumper crop,” she said.
Bernie Martin got up and walked across the room, where there were crates stacked on top of each other. Hetty could feel the sweat pumping from her.
“I am afraid we all went mad and supplied the crates. The lads handed them over the wall once full, and we drove them here. Don’t worry, we have the apples wrapped in newspaper, they will hold.”
There was silence as each woman eyed up Eve, trying to guess her reaction. Eve looked from face to face, straightening in her seat, her two hands clenched tight on her lap. Eithne Hall sighed, Rebecca Fleming fidgeted and Hetty seeped sweat. When Eve laughed out loud, their shoulders slumped in relief. Hetty took a tea towel and wiped it across her brow.
“I am sorry, ladies, but the tension is mighty,” she said and giggled. They all joined in and Eve felt the happiest she had been since she moved to Ludlow.
“That is a lot of apple tarts,” she said.
“Enough to feed the whole village,” Hetty said, and they laughed again, until the tears streamed down their faces, streaking their make-up.
Mrs Beecham was the first to bring them back, saying they had better quieten down or the people passing might think they were up to all sorts.
“We had better get down to business. We are supposed to be discussing new premises,” Hetty said, turning to Eve. “Your husband owns this small hall too and he has given it over to the school, a very worthy thing on his part, so the children can put on plays and maybe do some gym work. Until we can find a permanent home, we will just have to use our sitting rooms. Otherwise the group will fall through. We will all go back to just nodding to each other on the street.”
“I am not sure Arnold will allow the Ludlow Hall sitting room to be used.”
“We will bombard him with apples and flowers,” one woman said, and they all began to laugh again.
Eve waited until Arnold had returned from a short trip to the States to ask his permission for the club to use Ludlow Hall.
“It is an honour: they want to call the group after Ludlow Hall.”
“What name exactly?”
She decided to say something pompous to grab his attention.
“The Ludlow Ladies’ Society.”
“A suitable name. If you want it, the Society can have meetings here, but only in the kitchen.”
When she told the women they would have to call the club the Ludlow Ladies’ Society, they all agreed it was a small price to pay for a regular meeting place.
“There is nothing wrong with a fancy name. It gives our little group gravitas,” said Kathryn Rodgers.
“You wouldn’t be saying that if he wanted us to be the Rosdaniel Rabble,” Eithne Hall said, and they all laughed.
Connie got up from her chair and stretched.
“You think I should do the same?”
“I might have a way to help you.”
“I just want peace and quiet, Eve. I have a lot going on; I don’t really want a big deal.”
“You are right. You have just moved here all the way from the States and have this enormous old house to sort out and here I am going on about village politics. My apologies. When you are ready, we can look after the rest.”
She scratched at a flower on the table oilcloth. “Do you mind if I speak plainly?”
“Please do.”
“Open the gates and let the town in. Ludlow was always a place where people liked to walk with their kids. Some even dipped in the lake when the weather was good. Lock them out, you play into their hands.”
“But I am here on my own. It is weird meeting strangers in my back yard.”
Eve stood up. “It is up to you. I won’t overstay my welcome.”
Connie stood up and asked Eve to wait: she had something upstairs that might be hers. When she came back down with the charm bracelet, she thought Eve might faint.
Eve reached out, her hand enclosing the charm bracelet, letting the different charms fall through her fingers.
“Where did you find it?”
“Underneath one of the beds.”
“The bed with the patchwork quilt: my room.” Eve desperately tried to compose herself. “My husband gave me the charm bracelet on our wedding day. The first charm was the diamond heart. I am afraid the bracelet got rather crowded after that, especially when Arnold insisted on bringing me so many charms back from his numerous business trips to New York. I tried to put it on the morning when the bailiff came, but I was so upset I couldn’t close the clasp. So addled was I, the next thing I knew, I was out of Ludlow Hall and had no idea where the bracelet was.”
“Would they not let you back in to search for it?”
Eve snorted loudly. “The bank would have bloody well stopped me walking by on the road, if it could.”
Connie could see Eve was trying to conceal that her hands were shaking, so she placed the charm bracelet on the table, to allow her to pick it up when she was ready.
“I am so glad to have been able to reunite you with the bracelet. If there is anything else in the house you want to take, please do.”
Slow tears rolled down Eve’s cheeks. Embarrassed, she quickly wiped them away.
“You must think I am a right one. They are happy tears, I have not felt like this in a long time.”
Connie smiled and Eve thought there was a huge sadness about her.
“Where are my manners? I never sympathised with you on the loss of your husband. I am so sorry.” She took Connie’s hand and squeezed it hard. “Why don’t you join us at the Ludlow Ladies’ Society?”
“I don’t know much about sewing or anything like that.”
“We are also good for a cup of tea and a chat, if you change your mind. We are all in my place tomorrow night, No. 5 on the terrace as you go into town.”
“I am not sure.”
“We meet at seven. If you call before that, you won’t have to walk alone into a crowded room.”
Connie did not answer and Eve turned out into the hallway to the front door. For a moment, she swung around, taking in the wide, high hallway.
“I hope you find the peace you want here.”
Connie did not answer, but waited until Eve passed the rhododendron and out of sight before closing the front door.