Blackwater Hall, County Kerry
July 1939
Charlotte wasn’t at dinner, and Lady Rathmore’s fury filled the too-hot room. Her anger was not, thought Nancy, for the fact that her brother and sister-in-law were newly arrived and anxious to see Charlotte, but rather that her absence interfered with her ladyship’s already disrupted timetable. Cook had insisted the lamb could be kept warm, but Lord Rathmore clapped his hands and dinner was served.
Over the consommé there was discussion about Charlotte’s new charitable enterprise, an evening school in Ballinn where local girls took lessons in literature one night a week. Despite his air of distaste, Lord Rathmore seemed resigned to allowing his daughter this freedom for the time being.
‘Her community-minded spirit will be a distinct advantage for her marriage,’ he said to no one in particular, ‘for organising events and so forth.’
Lady Rathmore refolded her immaculate napkin. ‘It’s hardly a fundraising do, Charles.’
‘I daresay Charlotte will need to impress with the quality of her personality, my dear.’ This term of affection he used with cool emphasis. ‘The money she comes with will not be wholly sufficient and I’m afraid her blood is not as pure as it could be.’
Lady Rathmore pushed aside her soup. She half turned to the footman. ‘Tell Cook I need to see her after dinner. And send for the chauffeur; he was to collect Charlotte an hour ago.’
Nancy had bitten her lip. She knew from their correspondence that her sister-in-law’s enterprise wasn’t the genteel charity her family thought it to be. Charlotte’s great passion wasn’t the classics.
It was the stage.
As the conversation moved on around her, Nancy wondered how the Ballinn Dramatics Secret Society was coming along. At the start of the year, Charlotte had written begging for a script from London, and Nancy had complied, feeling both guilty for encouraging the deception and satisfied at being implicit in it. She had wrapped Three Wise Fools in a silk scarf and sent the package to coincide with Charlotte’s birthday, thereby avoiding Lady Rathmore’s scrutiny. According to her sister-in-law, there had been no end of problems, as everyone wanted to play Sidney Fairchild and no one wanted to be the lawyer, the banker or the judge. After this, Charlotte had decided the society had gone as far as it could with girls only and had opened it up to boys. Or rather – as became apparent from the changing tone of her letters – young men.
Neither Lord nor Lady Rathmore took breakfast at the table, and Hugo was not yet up, so when Charlotte joined Nancy and Teddy the following morning over boiled eggs and tea, there was free and eager conversation.
‘I’ve been simply dying for you to return,’ Charlotte said, taking Nancy’s hand. She looked at Teddy. ‘Both of you. How was the boat? Is it a menace to be on deck? I’ve heard the Irish Sea is beastly!’
Teddy laughed. ‘Questions . . . always questions.’
Charlotte waved her hand. ‘Please, give me something to dream about on the long winter nights.’
Nancy said, ‘Charlotte, you look beautiful.’ It was true. In three years, Charlotte had grown tall and slim like her mother. Still a teenager, but a woman already.
‘Oh.’ She flopped down at the table. Grinned. Her deep dimples were intensely attractive. ‘I look dastardly. Such a late night!’ She looked behind her as the footman left the room, then leaned in. ‘It’s fabulous. We’ll make Three Wise Fools into our first production.’
Teddy’s gaze jumped between the two women over his cup of tea. He cleared his throat. ‘Charlotte,’ he said, ‘whatever you’re up to, be careful.’
She laughed lightly, a strand of blond hair falling loose. ‘I always am.’
Nancy marvelled at her sister-in-law’s new-found confidence. The years had eaten away at her shy giggle. She no longer talked with her hands; her movements were purposeful, deliberate. Instead of a girl with dreams, she seemed altogether like a woman with plans.
‘I’m nineteen next year and quite old enough to be making my own decisions.’ Charlotte reached across the table to pick up a still-steaming egg, juggling it in her fingers. ‘Besides, if Nancy can do it, so can I.’
Nancy put down her toast. ‘Do what?’
‘Pave your own way.’
‘Charlotte, that’s very different . . .’
‘How so?’
‘You know perfectly well how so,’ said Teddy.
‘Times have changed, Teddy. The world has changed. How many estates like this do you think are left in this country? I was born during the war—’
‘I hate to contradict you, but the war finished in 1918.’
‘The War of Independence. Irish independence.’
‘Ah.’
‘Ah? Ah? Just like Father – pretending that Ireland is an outpost of England,’ said Charlotte. Teddy’s face hardened. She tapped at the side of her egg, lifting off its cap to reveal a gooey yolk. ‘Well, it isn’t.’
Teddy’s reply was bitten back as the footman returned. His nose was turned to the side and he held a pot at arm’s length, balancing it on his fingertips as though it might explode. ‘Coffee,’ he announced with distaste.
On her previous visit, Nancy’s request for coffee had been met with Irel – a flavoured syrup that tasted almost exactly the way a person who had never drunk coffee might imagine it should. Fearing a repeat performance, she’d snuck down to the kitchen the night before and left a bag of beans on the table.
‘Mother will have a fit,’ said Charlotte, leaning over to pick up a cup. She held it out and watched the dark liquid fill it to the brim.
She took a sip. Nodded politely. Then, after a beat too long, said, ‘Delicious.’
Nancy laughed. ‘You get used to it. Too used to it.’
Charlotte pushed the cup aside. ‘Teddy, do you want this?’
‘No thank you, Charlotte. I had better be just like Father and leave the women to their gossip.’ He got to his feet, his gaze anywhere but on his sister. In a swift movement he pushed his chair beneath the table and left.
Nancy steadied Charlotte with a soft hand. ‘Let him be.’
Charlotte stared at the door, as though willing him to return. ‘I don’t know why I said that.’ Teddy and Charles Rathmore were night and day.
‘You didn’t mean it.’ Nancy ran a finger around the rim of her glass. It was half full of reconstituted orange juice and smelled like sherbet lemons.
Charlotte said, ‘This family doesn’t understand what life is like outside these four walls. The Rathmores are a dying breed.’
‘Charlotte . . . I can’t help but feel these words aren’t your own.’
‘They are. Quite my own. The world is changing and my life should change with it.’ She leaned towards Nancy. ‘Dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels and gold wands in the bank, and buy a revolver.’
‘Well,’ said Nancy, ‘those words can’t possibly be your own.’
‘Countess Markievicz said them in 1915.’
Nancy looked blank.
‘She was sentenced to death. For the Easter Rising.’ Charlotte took a gulp of the cooling coffee and winced.
‘Yes, of course.’ Nancy had read something of Markievicz. The daughter of a baronet, sentenced but eventually released. Her story, her passion appealed to both high- and low-born. But for Charlotte, she might be more than aspirational; she could be a blueprint.
‘These are dangerous times, Charlotte. Not just here but across the continent. Take a care.’
Charlotte shook her head. ‘I want more in life, Nancy. Like you have.’
‘Me?’ Nancy looked over her shoulder. The room was empty. She said flatly, ‘I’m a secretary at a newspaper.’
‘You’re an orphan. Everything you are you did yourself!’ Charlotte was becoming animated. ‘You have ambition. And before you know it, you’ll be a journalist.’
‘Hardly before I know it.’ Nancy had sent off a dozen articles. None had been published. Her most recent – a piece proposing more prominent female involvement in the military – she had given directly to her boss. He didn’t print it. The next week King George approved the formation of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. Nancy thought she ought to have been smug, but the warm feeling of being right was chilled by the absence of anyone knowing it. ‘The grass is always greener,’ she said.
‘Bíonn adharca fada ar na ba i gcéin.’
‘You’ll have to enlighten me . . .’
‘It’s Irish. It means horns are always longer on the cow abroad, or some such thing. The gardener taught it to me.’
Nancy raised her eyebrows. ‘So this is where you’re learning all your revolutionary talk?’
Charlotte blushed a little, continued: ‘I am rather interested in my culture.’
Nancy peered over her cup. ‘Whose culture?’ English or Irish? Or American?
Charlotte took a deep breath, as though it would give her the courage to stop dancing around questions and find answers. ‘You know . . . I’m from the type of family that isn’t wanted here. People stare at me when I go to Ballinn. I live only ten miles away, but you’d think I was from another planet. It’s because I’m half Protestant . . .’
Nancy laughed. ‘I rather think it’s your blond hair.’
‘. . . and from the big house.’
‘Houses like Blackwater Hall were burned to the ground in the 1920s – yours escaped that fate. Your family is wanted here.’ Nancy didn’t add: or at least tolerated.
Charlotte said, ‘Only because of Grandpapa William.’
Nancy paused. ‘Ah yes, the one who broke the bread. Fed the masses.’ Teddy had told her of the first baron, Lord William Rathmore. He had arrived, newly ennobled, in Kerry in the 1820s and begun construction of Blackwater Hall, selling off his lands in Connaught to pay for it. The rumour in the village was that a great ringfort had been demolished to make way for his vision. ‘That’s all nonsense,’ Teddy had said in a rare dismissal of Kerry’s rich oral history, ‘made up because of our name.’ When Nancy had frowned at this explanation, he’d said, ‘Rathmore. It could be translated to An Ráth Mhór in Irish. It means big ringfort.’ But, he’d argued, the Rathmores were Rathmores long before they arrived in Ireland. ‘You can’t go around Irishising everything for the benefit of the rambling house.’ The story, true or otherwise, had lingered, but there was no ill-feeling towards William. Twenty years after his arrival, he mortgaged his estate to buy food for his tenants during the Great Famine. And in 1848, he hired ships to assist villagers to emigrate to America.
‘It was his generosity,’ said Charlotte, ‘that saved the house. That and Mother’s grandfather.’
Nancy nodded. Niamh’s grandfather had been one of the tenants who’d taken up William’s offer; he’d moved his family from a famine-ravaged Ireland to the United States. Within two generations, the Stacks had become a firm fixture in new-money America. Niamh’s father, Henry Stack, had grown up with stories of the old country. In 1910, he’d visited Ballinn for the first time. His daughter came with him. And she’d never left.
‘He was born in Ballinn, wasn’t he? Your mother’s grandfather?’
Charlotte nodded. ‘Not that she cares to acknowledge it.’
Niamh Rathmore was a fish out of water on Irish soil. Not a dent had been made in her American drawl in the three decades she’d lived at Blackwater Hall. For the briefest flicker, Nancy wondered what it had been like to be sold off to a lord, as so many American heiresses had been; to leave your home one day and never return. But the way Niamh had looked at her the day before stopped her short of feeling any sympathy for the woman.
‘But things are different now,’ Charlotte was saying, pulling Nancy from her reverie. ‘We can no longer pretend Blackwater is a piece of England. A piece of America. The Irish rule their own country. Thanks to the IRA.’
Nancy had hoped to avoid being dragged into politics on her first day at the house. ‘Of course. Ireland’s independent. But . . .’ she sniffed her toast; the butter was rancid, ‘the Irish Republican Army are outlawed.’
‘Yes, I know plenty about the IRA.’ At Nancy’s raised eyebrow, Charlotte added, ‘I read The Irish Press.’
‘Éamon de Valera’s rag?’
At the mention of the Taoiseach’s name, Charlotte visibly brightened. ‘Outlawing the IRA, it’s just appeasement. A simple nod to the English.’ Then, as quickly as she’d ignited, her flame waned. She put a hand to her mouth. ‘Sorry,’ she whispered.
Just as Nancy reached out to reassure her she’d taken no offence, Hugo entered the room. Charlotte quickly dropped her hand, sat up straighter. Let a veil slide over her face.
He breezed past the table, picking up bain-marie lids. ‘Talking about me?’
Charlotte laughed. ‘Does the world revolve around you, Hugo?’ She rounded her vowels with aplomb. It was camouflage not flattery, and the realisation gave Nancy a jolt of pleasure.
Over his shoulder, he asked: ‘Another late night?’
Charlotte’s voice became soft, soothing. ‘I know. I know. But the girls show so much promise. One of them has written the most magnificent tragedy . . .’
‘I don’t know why you bother. None of them has any hope.’ His back was turned, his plate piling high. ‘You should be concentrating on Lord Hawley’s visit.’
Charlotte reddened.
‘Lord Hawley?’ Nancy drank the last of her coffee, gritty but prized.
Hugo took a place at the head of the table. ‘Mother and Father have invited him to stay next month. He has a particular interest in acquiring a wife.’
‘I see,’ said Nancy. ‘Acquiring a wife?’ She bit her tongue. No drama. No argument. Sign the documents and get out.
But if Hugo heard her intimation, he didn’t flinch. He merely opened the newspaper. Its week-old headlines were familiar to her; she’d read them in London before they’d left.
Charlotte got to her feet. ‘I don’t care what you say, I won’t—’
‘Charlotte,’ Nancy cut her off, ‘you mentioned that the sweet peas were blooming. Would you show me?’ She stood and moved towards the French doors, then opened them towards the inky lake, letting the outside in, changing the room’s stale air. Looking over her shoulder, she gave Charlotte a steely look. ‘I’d like some for our bedroom.’ She spoke slowly, enunciating every word as she watched the younger woman smooth the tablecloth beneath her palm. Deep creases remained where she’d clutched it.
After a moment’s hesitation, Charlotte replied: ‘Of course.’ She turned her head to the side, away from Hugo, to wipe a single tear from her cheek. Nancy glanced to see if he’d noticed.
But Hugo’s eyes were fixed on the paper, hand hovering over his breakfast, crumbs already scattered on his jacket. Behind him, a new painting by an artist called O’Conor had been hung on the wall: some jugs and apples, a rich red cloth lying under them like a pool of blood. It matched the cravat that clung to his neck. Watching him from the door as Charlotte stepped out into an overcast Kerry day, Nancy remembered that it was at Hugo’s insistence that a morning buffet was served. The same content each and every day. ‘Tradition,’ he always said, ‘is what sets us apart.’
From what, or whom, she had not dared ask.