Page 71 of An Invitation to the Kennedys
‘Maureen!’Honor looked alarmed.
Maureen wondered had she been wrong to begin the story.Too late now.She tossed her head.‘You know it’s true.You are the godmother; you were there, at the christening,’ she insisted.She recalled how Brenda, the Dowager Lady Dufferin, had picked baby Sheridan up and held him close to her thin chest, had seen the moment when her face changed – the way her eyes grew wide in fright, the set of her thin lips, the way she straightened her arms sharply, so that the baby was jerked forward and began to cry, the strange angle she held him at, and how instantly Duff had moved to her side and grabbed the child from her.Lady Brenda had clawed the empty air where the baby had been, saying, ‘He’s not your babe, let me have him,’ then begun to cry when Duff, passing baby Sheridan to Maureen, had led her out of the chapel at Clandeboye.
‘I did not imagine anyone would speak of it,’ Honor said.
Maureen looked at Duff then.It was true that none of them had spoken of it afterwards, and here she was, telling the story as though it were just another piece of tittle-tattle.Duff’s face was thunderous.
‘I am only trying to tell the ambassador that people do believe in such things.Maybe not in America, where everything is new and shiny’ – she made it sound like an insult – ‘but here, and especially in Ireland.The beliefs are old and strange and go very deep indeed.’
‘They do say this house is haunted,’ Honor said thoughtfully then.
‘They say that about anywhere older than last week,’ Chips said indignantly.
‘Oh, what fun!’That was Elizabeth.‘Do tell – a woman, jilted on her wedding day, waiting through all eternity for her faithless lover?A man murdered by a rival, compelled to return again and again to the bloody scene?’
‘Nothing like that,’ Honor said, looking around at them all.Even the ambassador and Doris had drawn near, Maureen saw, so that they all sat or stood close.‘Rather sad, really.This was a girls’ school, a boarding school run by nuns, after it was the home of the Wrights who built it.But only for about five years.It closed because some of the girls died, not so much mysteriously as just horribly.Someone drowned in the river.Then there was a fire, only a small one, but a couple of girls got trapped in a dormitory.’
There was a silence then.Those who had drawn closer – Doris and the ambassador – stepped back again, but almost without knowing they did it.
‘How horrid,’ Doris said.
‘After that, I imagine not even Catholic parents wanted to leave their daughters there any longer,’ Duff said.Maureen felt rather than saw Rose flinch, as though someone had leaned over and pinched her.‘I imagine you’ll find a few walled-in nuns too, if you poke around long enough.There are always walled-in nuns.Shut away for disobedience, or impiety, or lasciviousness.Isn’t that what they call it?’He grinned around at them all, and Maureen felt Rose turn stiff and hard like stone.Her jawline tightened so it looked like it might shatter, but she said nothing.
‘What a grisly tale,’ Elizabeth said.Even she sounded subdued.She flashed a quick look at Brigid, who, Maureen saw, seemed equally struck.
‘Yes.And the house was in a frightful state when we bought it,’ Chips said.‘Actual blackboards in some of the reception rooms.’
‘How dreadful for you,’ Maureen said tartly.
‘Honestly, you have no idea the mischief the nuns made,’ he continued.‘The work Wellesley had to restore it.Every nook and cranny had been boxed off into tiny, terrible rooms.Or decked out with altars and those ghastly statues they love so much.’
‘That is not Catholicism, that is ignorance,’ Rose said.Maureen could hear the creak in her voice, the effort required to sound mild.‘After all, is there any finer artwork than in the Vatican?’
‘She’s right, you know.’That was Doris, placating.‘I have seen it.’
‘Don’t talk to Duff about ignorance,’ Maureen said with a laugh.‘Darling,’ she reached a hand out, ‘do tell them about McMahon’s wake?’
Duff rolled his eyes.‘One of our tenants at Clandeboye,’ he said.‘A Catholic tenant, but a decent chap.Died about a year ago.I was home at the time so I called to the family.He died suddenly and left behind a widow and five small children.I thought I’d stay just a moment but I was shown into the parlour, where the coffin was.An open coffin.There he was, in a suit they couldn’t afford to bury, and the children, all except the baby, had their hands in the coffin with him, stroking his face and touching his hands, wailing and saying his name again and again.It was barbaric.The baby played around on the floor, and these children pawed at a dead man’s face, tears falling from them to him, as though they thought he was alive and could hear them, while their mother sat there and let them do it.There was no decency,’ he said, shuddering.‘No decency at all.It was obscene.’
‘What did you do?’Chips asked, curious as always.
‘I gave them money and I left,’ he said.‘Left as quickly as I could, to get away from that grotesque sight.The whole thing is grotesque – the way they are forever looking towards a paradise after this life, and neglecting to protect those in their charge in this one.’
‘They?’Rose asked.
‘Yes.Positively relishing misery and privation, and gloating over all the virtue that will accrue to them in the next world.’He looked around in a way that told Maureen he thought himself among friends, friends with the same ideas as he had.
‘Ah.Notthey, then,’ Rose said tightly.‘In this case,we.’
There was a terrible pause then, and Maureen saw Duff flush red – whether with rage or embarrassment or both, she couldn’t tell.Only that he was furious.With her.With himself.For all that his gruff nature led him to be blunt – too blunt at times – he was almost always clever and tactful too.He did not blurt things out if those things would harm a plan of his or his companions.And now here he was, led on by her, insulting the very people he wished to charm.People he needed to charm.Rose walked away.
‘Duff, darling, much as I love you, when you say things like that, I’m afraid you do rather remind me of some very dreadful people I know in Berlin,’ Doris said lightly.
‘What dreadful people?’Almost, Maureen thought, he was glad that someone had broken the silence, even if it was to confront him.
‘Chips knows the ones I mean, don’t you, Chips?’He ignored her.‘The sort who have all kinds of ugly words and names for Jews.Who think them capable of dark plots and cunning subterfuge and that everything they do is in service of some secret end.’There was nothing light about her voice now.
‘I don’t see—’ Duff began.
