The Blood Upon the Rose by Tim Vicary Read Free Book Online Page B

boarding school and her father to the army. Only Catherine was left with her governess in the big house by the wide, empty sea, 200 miles from Dublin, to witness the long slow collapse of the mother she had so admired.
    Her father said it was a disease, and certainly, Maeve O'Connell-Gort was ill. Her once fine bones became gaunt, skeletal under a paper-fine skin; her eyes wide, dark, haunted. But she would not accept that she was ill. ‘The body itself is only an expression of the mind, my dear,’ she had whispered to Catherine, one dark winter evening in west Galway, while an Atlantic gale howled around the rafters of their house, Killrath. ‘I was beautiful once because I was loved, and you are beautiful because you are a child of that love. Now your father has abandoned me, and there is nothing left. It is not my body, it is my heart that is broken.’
    And so Catherine learned of her father's English mistress, Sarah Maidment, who had usurped her mother's place in the Dublin house in Merrion Square. For seven years Catherine had visited the house only once, under duress. Sarah Maidment had put herself out, bringing Catherine dresses from England and arranging visits to the theatre in the hope of winning her over as she had done with her brothers. But Catherine had thanked her, curtsied, and then scarcely spoken again for the whole visit. She had put her foot through the skirts of the dresses so she could not wear them, and then left them behind.
    Sarah Maidment was a rather short, round woman with the beginnings of a double chin, which made it easy to despise as well as hate her. She had turned most of the house into a hospital for wounded soldiers, which was very admirable, no doubt; but Catherine had refused to help. Her interest in medicine grew out of a desire to help her mother, not these strangers. So she ignored them, saying the war was against Ireland's interests, anyway, so the soldiers should not have gone.
    It had not been a happy visit.
    And now her two brothers and her mother were dead, and Mrs Maidment was in a nursing home in Bournemouth. So Sir Jonathan had asked Catherine to be mistress of the house. It was part of a deal they had made between them. There was little love in it.
     
     
    They had made the deal ten months ago, in the big dining room where she had once waltzed with her father and the ADC. When Catherine saw it after the war, it was stripped bare. All the paintings had gone, the wallpaper was stained and scribbled on, there was a single dim lightbulb in the chandelier. The last of the wounded had been carried out, but there were still two hospital beds in a corner.
    Sir Jonathan had been in his army uniform. His riding boots echoed on the bare floorboards. Catherine had worn a bright, defiant red dress with high button boots. She sat on one of the beds and swung them, looking at him.
    He said: ‘You know Sarah - Mrs Maidment - is dying. She has cancer of the lungs. She has a few more months, that’s all.’
    At least she'll be thinner, Catherine thought, viciously. But she said: ‘I'm sorry.’
    ‘Are you?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Well. I . . . I've thought of marrying her, you know. We've discussed it.’ He looked at her for a reaction but there was none visible. ‘She has two children, grown-up boys. By her husband, of course, they are no relation of yours. They are all quite poor.’
    Catherine looked away from him, out of the window. Her mother had been dead for less than a year. She still loved her father but she despised him, too, for what he had done.
    ‘Mrs Maidment's sons are no responsibility of mine but they are decent fellows. Both did their bit in the war; one lost an arm. Neither has a job yet - are you listening to me?’
    She had got up and walked to the window. It was so painful to hear. Without turning round she said: ‘Yes, Father.’
    ‘If I married Sarah, they could inherit this house, and my part of the estate. It would be a reward for virtue. But they are