‘How do you do, Mr—er—?’ She held out her hand.
‘O’Flaherty will do—without the Mister.’ The man ignored her hand, and picked up her cases. ‘Guest,’ he added with a faint snort. ‘Well for Mr Crispin that himself’s not at home to see this.’ And on this obscure utterance, he turned and strode towards the main doors, heading for the car park. Sandie had to run in order to keep up with him.
She said breathlessly, and a little desperately, ‘I am expected, aren’t I?’
‘They’re expecting someone, surely.’ Sandie’s cases were fitted into the back of a large estate car. ‘In you get, now. We have a fair drive ahead of us.’
Sandie got into the passenger seat and fastened its belt. It was not the introduction she’d expected to Ireland of the Hundred Thousand Welcomes, she thought, trying to feel amused, and failing.
‘It’s a beautiful day,’ she tried tentatively, as they won free of the airport’s environs, and embarked on the road to Galway.
‘It won’t last,’ was the uncompromising reply, and Sandie sighed soundlessly, and transferred her attention to the scenery.
It took well over an hour to reach Galway. Beyond the city, the road narrowed dramatically, and the weather, as O’Flaherty had predicted, began to deteriorate. Ahead, Sandie could see mountains, their peaks hidden by cloud, and the whole landscape seemed to be changing, taking on a disturbing wildness now that the narrow grey towns had been left behind.
O’Flaherty had wasted no time with his driving so far, but now he slowed perceptibly, as the rattle of loose chippings stung at the underside of the car. Moorland rolled away on both sides of the road, interspersed with a scatter of small white houses, most of them with thatched roofs. Here and there, the earth had been deeply scarred by turf cutting, and piles of turfs stood stacked and awaiting collection near the verges. There were great stretches of water too, looking grey and desolate under the lowering sky. Some of the lakes had islands, and Sandie, fascinated, spotted the ruined stones of an ancient tower on one, half hidden by trees and undergrowth. She would have loved to have asked its history, but after sneaking a look at O’Flaherty’s forbidding countenance she decided to save her questions for Crispin.
She was frankly puzzled by the little man’s hostility, and it made her apprehensive about her reception generally when eventually they reached their journey’s end. If they ever did, she thought, stretching her cramped legs in front of her.
‘Too long a ride for you, is it?’
‘No, I’m enjoying it,’ Sandie said mendaciously. ‘The scenery’s fabulous, isn’t it? So romantic.’
Her innocent comment was greeted by another snort, and silence descended again.
There was little other traffic—some cyclists, a lorry piled high with bales of hay, a few cars and a couple of horseboxes. Occasionally they were brought to a halt by sheep and cattle wandering across the road in front of them.
Rain splattered across the windscreen, and O’Flaherty swore under his breath, and flicked on the wipers, before turning off on to a side road bordering yet another enormous lake. The clouds were down so low now that only the lower slopes of the mountains were visible.
‘What are they called?’ Sandie asked, pointing.
‘The Twelve Pins.’
The road unwound in front of them, like a narrow grey ribbon, edging the water. Sandie watched the rain dancing across the flat surface of the lake, and shivered a little, not from cold, but a sudden swift loneliness.
If she was at home now, she thought, she would probably be helping her mother in the garden, with its neat lawns and beds and well-pruned trees. And instead, here she was driving through a wilderness of water and peat bogs, to what?
She hadn’t expected Crispin to be at the airport to meet her, but she wished with all her heart that he had been. Perhaps she wouldn’t have been feeling quite so strange—and desolate, she thought swallowing a lump in her throat, as she realised just how far she was from home and everything familiar.
‘There’s Killane,’ said O’Flaherty abruptly, and gestured towards where a broad promontory jutted out into the lake. Peering forward, Sandie could see a thin trail of smoke rising above the clustering trees and, as they got closer, could make out the outline of a house. He turned a car across a cattle grid, through empty gateposts, and up a long drive flanked on each side by tall hedges of fuchsia, growing wild in a profusion of pink, crimson and purple.
And then the house was there in front of them, big and square, like a child might draw, with long multi-paned windows. Stone steps, guarded by urns filled with trailing plants, led up to the double doors of the main entrance. It looked grand, forbidding and slightly shabby, all at the same time, Sandie decided wonderingly.
O’Flaherty brought the car to a halt at the foot of the steps. ‘Away in with you,’ he directed. ‘I’ll see to your luggage.’
Sandie flew through the raindrops up the steps, and turned the handle on one of the doors. It gave more easily than she anticipated, and she nearly fell into a wide hall, with a flagged stone floor.
‘God bless us and save us!’ exclaimed a startled voice.
As Sandie recovered her equilibrium, she found she was being observed by a tall grey-haired woman in a flowered overall, carrying a tray laden down with tea-things.
She said, ‘I was told to come straight in. I am expected …’
It was beginning, she realised with exasperation, to sound a little forlorn. It was also irksome to find the woman gaping at her, rather as O’Flaherty had done at the airport.
Sandie straightened her shoulders. ‘I’d like to see Mr Sinclair, please,’ she said with a trace of crispness.
‘He’s in Galway, and won’t be back till night. I’ll take you to the madam.’ The woman continued across the hall, to another pair of double doors, and shouldered her way through them, indicating that Sandie should follow.
It was a big room, filled comfortably with sofas and chairs in faded chintz. A turf fire blazed on the hearth, and a woman was sitting beside it. She was dark-haired, with a vivid, striking face, lavishly made up, and was wearing a smart dress in hyacinth blue silk, with a wool tartan scarf wrapped incongruously round her neck. Sandie recognised her instantly and nervously.
‘Here’s the young lady come to play the piano for Mr Crispin,’ the woman who’d shown Sandie in announced, setting the tray down on an occasional table.
Sandie found herself being scrutinised from several directions—by the woman beside the fire, by a tall, dark girl, bearing a strong resemblance to Crispin, and also by two children, a boy and girl barely in their teens, bent over a jigsaw puzzle at another table.
‘Oh, dear,’ Magda Sinclair said at last. ‘Oh, dear. This is too bad of Crispin. This really won’t do at all.’
Sandie knew an ignominious and overwhelming urge to burst into weary tears. She’d set out with such high hopes, and come all this way, and now Crispin wasn’t here, and his mother disliked her on sight. She remembered Crispin had said she was temperamental.
‘Now, now, Mother.’ The dark girl got up from the window seat where
